Book Review: Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

Bringing Up Bebe is written by an American mother living in France. She is intrigued by the difference in behavior between French and American children (read: American kids throw their food and French kids don't) and begins investigating French parenting. This book is about her discoveries.

The last thing many moms want to do is read a dry, preachy parenting book during nap time. The few nuggets of wisdom aren't worth the horrible guilt, self-judgement, and overanalyzing. Also, I like to think that underneath the supermom exterior there is a real human being who might just want to read something that isn't about sippy cups and sleep training.

But I heartily recommend this book to all moms - and less heartily I recommend it to those who aren't moms, because it is that interesting and well written...though it may not be as funny for you. Unless you find power struggles with beings one quarter of your size amusing.

This book is far from preachy and - best of all - it is hilarious. Well-written, self-deprecating, honest, and anecdotal, I found myself wanting to read this book. I tore through it in about two days (usually reading while I was nursing).

My favorite thing about this book though is that it opened my eyes to how cultural our ideas of parenting are. Most of what I took for granted as some universal agreement about what a good mother looks like is actually unique to us Americans. It took a lot of pressure off of me to be this so-called perfect mother. Realizing that the perfect mother looks very, very different in other cultures revealed that maybe there isn't a perfect mother. Maybe all these things that I felt like I had to do (go on playdates; go to story time; breastfeed my child; stay at home; alternately work a billion hours and look like I do it with ease; prep my child for college at the age of one; never take care of myself - always the baby first!) were actually just cultural ideals that I could reject, not a solemn, ethical parenting code.

There may be some moments in the book where French parenting is a bit idealized. But I can't really blame the author for this when babies in France magically sleep through the night around 3 months for no reason that French parents can recall other than that the moms had to return to work and "the baby knew mom needed her sleep." Meanwhile, American parents are still sleep deprived several months after the baby is born and often past baby's first year.

Maybe somehow our parenting ideals are working against us? After reading this book, as well as All Joy and No Fun, I'm starting to think that may be the case. And while I have no intention of making any sweeping claims about the right way to parent (I really don't believe there is one right way), I do intend to go easy on myself and let myself parent the best I can, sans cultural commentary.

An Update in Reading

This month has been so busy that routine, along with all of the wonderful things that routine maintains including laundry and blog posting, has disappeared from my life completely.
Not surprisingly, I've still managed to read a few books. Because that's the second to the last thing to go (the last thing would obviously be breathing).
So here is a quick survey of my reading last month:

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, 4 stars. This is the first comic book/graphic novel that I've ever read! Reading comic books is difficult for me. My mind keeps trying to create the setting, the mood, to draw the characters and it gropes for information about these details - "Why is there so much dialogue! Why won't they stop and tell me where they are and what the air smells like and what the weather is doing?" Then I remember that it's all in a picture behind the words. So weird. But eventually I got into a good rhythm and didn't have to remind myself to slow down and look at the pictures. When I finished this collection, I had a few thoughts: That was a weird place to stop the story. Holy cannoli that was gruesome and creepy. There might have been a few sections that were pure genius. I wasn't instantly enthusiastic about it. I had to let it stew in my brain. I had to strain out the gruesome (I'm not prudish usually about violence, but for some reason, probably since there were pictures, it creeped me out) and absorb the great. Because there were two issues (I think they are called issues?) that Blew. My. Mind. One of them was an issue that switches to the point of view of a very minor character, a waitress at a diner who is a writer. She sees her customers as fuel for her writing. That's all I will say, but if you only read one issue, that would be the one to read. Neil Gaiman is extraordinary. If I was still teaching, I would seriously consider adding a lesson where we analyzed one or two issues of this text.

Anne of Green Gables, 5 billion stars. (The exaggeration is in in honor of Anne, of course.) I never realized that L.M. Montgomery was one of my favorite authors until a week ago. I got a sudden urge to reread Anne of Green Gables and now all I want to do is read Anne of Green Gables or watch Anne of Green Gables. Also, I plan on moving to Prince Edward Island. Seriously. My husband said he would do it.

Carry On Warrior, 3 stars. I can't enjoy nonfiction as much as fiction and so I always find it difficult to rate and recommend and talk about at all. Also, I have a weird voice in my head that is super judgmental when I read nonfiction. I haven't the slightest idea why. Anyway, this book was pretty hilarious, especially the anecdotes about the author and her children. I know it's cliche of me to enjoy reading about how a child threw a temper tantrum at Target just because I too may one day get to experience that joy, but what can I say, it's funnier on this side of things. The author of this text, Glennon Doyle Melton, is well known for her brutal honesty. I found this very refreshing and challenging. Sure, she had some ideas that were strange and that I disagreed with (which the voice in my head demands that I tell you), but I'd totally be friends with her. I read a review on Goodreads that said the prose was terrible. It wasn't. It was really funny. It was blog-prose or thinking-out-loud prose. But it worked for the book stylistically.

What are you reading currently?

The magic of nonfiction

       

  Two Christmases ago my husband bought me a new journal. Its spine was stiff, the pages yellow and filled with empty gray lines, waiting for the magic of pen touching to paper, connecting thoughts with words and becoming matter. The blank page has always inspired me. More exciting even than beginning to fill it up was when I got a new notebook or journal and I sat down and decided what I wanted to use it for: Lists? Hopes and dreams? Learning? Poetry? Stories? Often, the notebooks became a mishmash of all these things, like our lives are, a combination of the mundane and extraordinary, the prosaic and the whimsical.

Despite my obsession with blank pages, I viewed my own life as more of a fill-in-the-blank type of story. Or possibly one of those choose-your-own-adventure books. I fully acknowledged that my choices impacted my future and shaped who I became; I didn’t acknowledge that my choices were almost limitless. I could never be a rock star, for instance. I was both too practical and too talentless. That was not an option for me. I could never move to New York and work in the publishing field; that was too far from the familiar safety of the west coast and far too competitive of a career – I would be like Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada, only with books instead of clothes. That just didn’t seem like it would ever happen to me.

Then one beautiful winter day…everything changed.

Until this particular day, I upheld a secret, unuttered oath never to read and enjoy nonfiction, especially of the “self-help” variety (condescension dripping from every unuttered syllable). December of 2013 I saw a video online about the 10 item wardrobe and I thought, “how very minimalist and what a perfect excuse to spend money on nice clothing.” I found a book that described the 10 item wardrobe, along with many other suggestions for how to live your life and (gasp!) I requested it from the library (I couldn’t buy it, it was nonfiction) and my oath was snapped in two because I accidentally enjoyed it.

It wasn’t quite a self-help book; it was more a book of…lifestyle suggestions. I read it and was completely taken in. It was inspiring. I felt the tingling of possibility. I felt like boring little me, the girl who will never be fashionable, who rarely wears make-up, who lives a humble life that no one particularly admires could become Storybook Me, the girl who has always existed in my mind as a daring, confident young woman who surrounds herself with beauty and is admired by men and women alike for her simple but stylish dress and unassuming but lovely appearance. It was intoxicating and addicting. What other inspirations waited for me in the world of nonfiction? What other books might expand this chink that I had made in my concept of myself? Could I possibly chip away until this small crack became a large passage, allowing light to flood in and reveal my hidden potential?

I won’t go through every evolution that followed this initial affair with nonfiction. The long and the short of it was that I found myself gravitating toward books that offered me guidance: books on pregnancy and parenting, books on spirituality, books on friendship, and books on self-acceptance. Slowly, even as I became disgruntled with one book, unimpressed by another, bored by some, and swept away by some, I began to change the way I viewed myself and my life.

By far the most influential of all these was the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. It was this book that taught me that life was what you made it; your story was yours, completely, and if you didn’t like the story you were living, you could and should change it. Dream big, this book whispered. Stop aiming low.

To a certain extent, the fill-in-the-blank story still feels true to me, despite all that I’ve learned. We are born into a certain social class, with specific demographic information working for or against us. But too many of us fall into these lives that we feel born into without ever stopping to ask if this is really what we want. There are many things that we dream of doing, but feel, that couldn’t possibly happen to me. Other people get published, other people start nonprofits, other people…Not me.

This journey through the world of the realistic, the oh-so-drab world of nonfiction, has taught me that my own reality can be as magical as any piece of fiction. My life is a blank page, an empty canvas. The difference between other people and me is that they were willing to try and pursue their dream; they didn’t assume that it couldn’t happen to them. Life, it turns out, is not like the board game – you don’t get a list of finite options and then spin a wheel to see if you get lucky. (With 30k a year, I better marry a doctor! I won’t be a billionaire at this rate and will probably have to review other retirement options at the end of the game!)

There is no wheel of fortune. There is just a notebook filled with empty lines, and every day from the moment you wake up, you make your imprint on those pages, inking in your identity, your world, your stories.