I've decided to give myself the gift of reading this year, carving out deliberate quiet spaces to absorb creative works that are brand new to me. Over the course of the past two years (one supposes the Covid Pandemic plays into it), I've gotten away from the practice, and as a result, that mental muscle has begun to atrophy. The last thing I want to become is a slave to technology, or perhaps even worse, a man stuck in a valley of disinterest and apathy. So, suffice to say, I'm jumping back in and plan to read as many books as I can. I've also decided that most of those books will be written by women.
The first book I finished in 2023 was absolutely delightful and thought-provoking. Without providing a nauseating dissertation about how far too many American men tend to view women through the poisonous prism of the Madonna-Whore Complex, Pamela Druckerman's "Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting" helped me understand the way other cultures, in this case the French, take a far more healthy and refreshing approach to parenting, and with it comes a curious and enchanting perspective on femininity, womanhood, aging, motherhood and, dare I say, sex; certainly a more unique and restorative approach then we tend to have here in The United States of Puritanica. I was content to wrap my mind around a wonderfully new set of ideas.
So, I finished her book first and I'm glad I did. It was thought-provoking, charming, heartbreaking, funny, brilliant, utterly relatable and all kinds of lovely.
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"The Frenchwomen I meet aren’t at all blasé about motherhood, or about their babies’ well-being. They’re awed, concerned, and aware of the immense life transformation that they’re about to undergo. But they signal this differently. American women typically demonstrate commitment by worrying and by showing how much they're willing to sacrifice, even while pregnant, whereas Frenchwomen signal their commitment by projecting calm and flaunting the fact that they haven’t renounced pleasure.
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—need the chance to cultivate their inner lives without a mother’s constant interference.
Letting children 'live their lives' isn’t about releasing them into the wild or abandoning them (though French school trips do feel a bit like that to me). It’s about acknowledging that children aren’t repositories for their parents’ ambitions or projects for their parents to perfect. They are separate and capable, with their own tastes, pleasures, and experiences of the world.
If your child is your only goal in life, it's not good for the child. What happens to the child if he’s the only hope for his mother? I think this is the opinion of all psychoanalysts..."
- Pamela Druckerman "Bringing Up Bebe"
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Next up, I'll be driving into Lorrie Moore's "Birds Of America" and "Up On The Rooftop" by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.
What are YOU reading?
