Quotes from Pamela Druckerman

One reason for pausing is that young babies make a lot of movement and noise while they're sleeping. This is normal and fine. If parents rush in and pick the baby up every time he makes a peep, they'll sometimes wake him up.

Perhaps he was recalling the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who wrote in the nineteenth century: "When we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible: it lies down at the bottom of the other side. But once we have crossed the top of the hill, death comes in view—death, which, until then, was known to us only by hearsay.")

She'll thank you when she's thirty and can still fit into her high school jeans.

Hanukah is over, we're not Jewish anymore," she tells me.

WARMING UP TO the crèche turned out to be easy. Warming up to the other mothers there isn't. I'm aware that Anglo-American-style instant bonding between women doesn't happen in France. I've heard that female friendships here start out slowly, and can take years to ramp up. (Though once you're finally 'in' with a French woman, you're supposedly stuck with her for life. Whereas your English-speaking insta-friends can drop you at any time.)

The couple is the most important. It's the only thing that you chose in your life. Your children, you didn't choose. You chose your husband. So, you're going to make your life with him.

The seminal journey of the forties is from "everyone hates me" to "they don't really care.

Newborns typically can't connect sleep cycles on their own. But from about two or three months they usually can, if given a chance to learn how.

The de'clic (DEH-kleek) is an aha moment when a child figures out how to do something important on his own...it's a welcome sign of maturity and autonomy.

People's youthful quirks can harden into adult pathologies. What's adorable at 20 can be worrisome at 30 and dangerous at 40.

a minimum, the toys are put away at night. Parents see doing this as a healthy separation and a chance to clear their minds when the kids go to bed. Samia, my neighbor who during the day is the extremely doting mother of a two-year-old, tells me that when her daughter goes to bed, "I don't want to see any toys. . . . Her universe is in her room.

gift.) I'm not bothered by the famous Parisian

babies wake up between their sleep cycles, which last about two hours. It's normal for them to cry a bit when they're first learning to connect these cycles. If a parent automatically interprets this cry as a demand for food or a sign of distress and rushes in to soothe the baby, the baby will have a hard time learning to connect the cycles on his own. That is, he'll need an adult to come in and soothe him back to sleep at the end of each cycle.

Part of me just wants to force-feed these women some spoonfuls of fatty pâté. But another part of me is dying to know their secrets. Having kids who sleep well, wait and don't whine surely helps them stay so calm. But there's got to be more to it. Are they secretly struggling with anything? Where's their belly fat? If this is all a façade, what's behind it? Are French mothers really perfect? And if so, are they happy?

In French, giving birth without an epidural isn't called "natural" childbirth. It's called "giving birth without an epidural" (accouchement sans péridurale).

It quickly becomes clear that having a child in France doesn't require choosing a parenting philsophy.

Their fantasy men--like Yon-sama--not only wouldn't spend their days barking drink orders from the couch, they might not ever be home at all. And that's okay. For these women the pleasure of a fantasy lover comes not from having him but from pining for him.

The child must not invade the parents' whole universe . . . for family balance, the parents also need personal space,

What really fortifies Frenchwomen against guilt is their conviction that it's unhealthy for mothers and children to spend all their time together. They believe there's a risk of smothering kids with attention and anxiety, or of developing the dreaded relation fusionnelle, where a mother's and a child's needs are too intertwined. Children—even babies and toddlers—get to cultivate their inner lives without a mother's constant interference.

I don't want to be Jewish, I want to be British," she announces in early December.

French moms often ask me where I plan to deliver, but never how. They don't seem to care. In France, the way you give birth doesn't situate you within a value system or define the sort of parent you'll be. It is, for the most part, a way of getting your baby safely from your uterus into your arms.

I realize that i've seen French mothers and nannies pausing exactly this little bit before tending to their babies during the day. It hadn't occurred to me that this was deliberate or that it was at all significant.

I live in a world of worst-case scenarios.

Never mind having an existential crisis; it's been years since we've even been to the movies.