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I’m not one of those new parents who’s rushing out to read a bunch of parenting books, but this was given to me as a gift by a close friend who told me it gave her a path forward out of the trenches when she had a newborn, so of course I read it. It’s not a perfect book by far, but there is a lot of good stuff in here.

This book’s thesis — that NOT making your life 110% about your child and leaving space for you as a person — was extremely validating. Especially in the face of American parenting culture, which often looks more like martyrdom.  It validated a lot of my instincts that some people on the internet might have told me were selfish or wrong. The idea that it’s genuinely better for my child to learn how to wait rather than have her every need catered to or every word listened to absolutely immediately? So freeing.

The chapters on sleep were also interesting, especially because they aligned really nicely with everything my husband and I had already learned in the Taking Cara Babies newborn class (which I HIGHLY recommend).

(Finally, beware there is definitely some fatphobia here. I wasn’t a huge fan of the chapters that examined “bouncing back” culture. If you’re sensitive or vulnerable to that kind of thing, be advised.)

I'm laughing at myself for once again pushing through and finishing a book solely because I'm shook at how bad it is and want to roast it online. I still can't believe she had 4 nannies after her twins were born so she'd never have to change diapers or do laundry and people actually want to take parenting advice from her! This woman is super privileged and our lives are not comparable lol. 

I have so many gripes with Bringing up Bebe that I started a note in the notes app to keep track of everything unhinged about it. Here are some things I thought were terrible:

-It's extremely fatphobic. This comes up constantly throughout the book (if you want to know how dated it is, early on, she mentions both the Atkins diet and Woody Allen in a positive light). There's tons of diet culture and she praises French women for regaining their pre-pregnancy bodies within 3 months of giving birth, because the whole point is to "make sure Monsieur is happy." Ew. "Paying attention" to what you eat and not eating bread 5 days/week seems like disordered eating, not a positive thing. 
-One of the first red flags for me is that she finds it charming that her British husband has no idea how to cook and stores canned goods in the fridge. Later, she goes on AT LENGTH about how American women are too bitchy and should expect less of our husbands. If we didn't nag them, we could just be happily surprised when they actually do something helpful! Yeah, hard pass.
-She shares endless anecdotes of her encounters and conversations with French moms and American moms... and takes them as absolute fact and representative of the entire population in each country. She's actually only talking to upper class Parisian moms and NYC moms, so it's not truly representative. 
-Given that she's a journalist, this book relies heavily on assumptions, projections, and anecdotes. She praises the government-subsidized daycare in France, the subsidized healthcare, etc., and quickly dismisses that different parenting approaches could be largely due to French folks having a hell of a lot less to worry about because daycare is covered, there's paid maternity leave, healthcare is subsidized, and they receive a government stipend for having kids. No wonder French women can be more chill and laissez faire! 
-Lots of cultural differences around food/eating in France that she doesn't examine, just blindly praises. Ex) if your kid is hungry, too bad, they only get a snack once/day at 4:30pm. Or, if your kid dislikes a certain texture, too bad, they have to eat it anyways, don't be picky. I'd rather feed my kid or accommodate a textural ick (which is so common for neurodivergent folks!). Come on.
-At one point she says "they made it sound like nipple confusion was scarier than autism" and I nearly threw the book across the room. 

The final third had some halfway decent concepts. Here are a few things that I thought were interesting or worthwhile:

-French children's books don't all have happy endings. Often there's a problem, a change, and then the problem comes up again and life goes back to the same as it was. I don't hate that realism! It makes sense to teach kids that there's not always going to be a happy ending and we sometimes have to struggle with the same challenges for a long time.
-Firmly saying no to your kids and meaning it seems perfectly fine (not a radical concept invented by the French though, Pamela). 
-I like the concept of having your kids try every food on their plates, but not forcing them to finish it, and encouraging them to pay attention to sensory things like the crunchiness of a vegetable or its relative sweetness or acidity. 
-I appreciated the idea of "discovery" and exploring the world rather than rushing kids to meet developmental milestones (though you have to wonder if the American impulse to rush is caused by broader systemic things like capitalism, rather than ~silly neurotic moms~ as Pamela blames it on). 

Anyways, I'd say this one is very skippable, or at least not worth living your whole life by! Take it with a grain of salt. 

Parts were interesting and informative, but the fetishization of thinness, fatphobia, and casual misogyny should be dismissed wholeheartedly 

After living in France for 2 years, this books helps put so much of French culture into context, I.e. explains why people are how they are! I personally found that many of these parenting lessons resonated with me, and I’m excited to try them out. I didn’t like the sections on weight gain/loss; it is clearly out of sync with the times. I wonder if it can be updated to be more nuanced than “French women starve themselves and so should you.”