New Yorker Pamela Druckerman married an Englishman and lived with him in Paris, where she had a baby, closely followed by twins. In England or the US she might have found sympathy and chummed up with similarly sleep-deprived, frazzled new mums. But motherhood in Paris was different.
She found herself in a strange new world where babies slept through the night from two months, ate at adult meal times, often attended nursery from nine months, where they ate a varied and sophisticated diet and didn't throw their dinners about. And the mums were not knackered and spattered with vomit. They looked chic, even sexy, and had their own grown-up lives.
As a journalist and desperate mother, Druckerman was keen to uncover the secret of French parenting. It appeared to "vacillate between being extremely strict and shockingly permissive", but the results were impressive. The parents were not shouting, the children were quiet, patient and able to cope with frustration. Unlike her own intensive and exhausting "Anglophone" method of raising a child, the French seemed to have harnessed an "invisible, civilising force" that made parenting a comparative breeze. Her observations were confirmed by a Princeton research study, which discovered that mothers in Ohio found parenting twice as unpleasant as comparable mothers in Rennes, France.
Druckerman has interviewed parents and experts and compared her findings with American theories and behaviours when making trips home. The result is this self-deprecating, witty, informative but slightly ambivalent bringing-up-baby book. It doesn't seek to give advice, just describes the author's experience – her pain, struggles and triumphs, and sets out the two alternative methods: the calm, pleasant and for the most part enjoyable French experience, versus the fairly hysterical, intense and gruelling Anglophone method, and allows you to choose. She doesn't fall completely for the French method, but on this evidence, I do – though it's three decades too late for me now.
Druckerman was not in love with Paris and disappointed to find that the French mothers, with whom she had expected to make friends, were not keen on bonding with other mothers. They had better things to do. Waiting is the key: the French do not do instant gratification. It starts more or less at birth. When a French baby cries in the night the parents go in, pause, and observe for a few minutes. They know that babies' sleep patterns include movements, noises and two-hour sleep cycles, in between which the baby might cry. Left alone it might "self-soothe" and go back to sleep. If you dash in like an Anglophone and immediately pick your baby up, you are training it to wake up properly. But if a French baby does wake up and cry properly on its own, it will be picked up. Result? French babies often sleep through the night from two months. Six months is considered very late indeed.
French babies continue to wait – when they are babies "long stretches from one feed to the next"; when older until 4 o'clock "gouter" for sweets and cakes (no treats straight from the supermarket checkout); until their mother finishes a conversation, or whatever she's doing at the time. Even toddlers wait contentedly for their food in restaurants.
Doesn't it sound like a heavenly dream? But Druckerman claims to have witnessed it all, and I believe her. This waiting, according to the French "is a first, crucial lesson in self-reliance and how to enjoy one's own company". To believe in it you need to also believe that a baby is capable of learning and able to cope with frustration.
The French have their own experts: Rousseau, Piaget and Françoise Dolto, "the Titan of French parenting", who believed that children are rational and "understand language as soon as they are born", hence you can "explain the world to them". They must be provided with a "cadre" or frame – "setting firm limits for children, but giving them tremendous freedom within those limits". It's a difficult mix to get to grips with. Those boundaries are repressive enough to worry Druckerman. Is she crushing her daughter's spirit, stifling her self-expression? "Repeatedly blocking her urges feels wrong." But the French think children must learn to cope with frustration. It's a core life skill. And "the word 'No' rescues children from the tyranny of their own desires."
Returning home, Druckerman was shocked to see American mothers following their toddlers around playgrounds, commenting loudly on their every move – so different from the more detached French mothers, who sit at the edge of the playground chatting calmly to friends, while leaving their toddlers to get on with it.
French mothers are also calmer about pregnancy: the "French pregnancy press doesn't dwell on unlikely worst-case scenarios". Au contraire, it recommends serenity. There are no terrifying warnings about foodstuffs or sex, or longings for a natural birth. In France 87% of women have epidurals, and don't seem bothered. We may think their system over-medicalised, but France "trumps the US and Britain on nearly every measure of infant and maternal health". And pregnant French women are thinner – particularly in Paris. To them, "food cravings are a nuisance to be vanquished" not indulged because "the foetus wants cheesecake".
The French don't do indulgence either. Their children are trained to eat everything. No pandering to picky eaters. No children's menus in restaurants, and here is one four-course crèche menu: heart of palm and tomato salad, followed by turkey au basilica and rice in a provençal cream sauce, St Nectaire cheese with baguette, kiwi fruit. Not a Turkey Twizzler in sight. Most impressive of all, the French take their nursery teachers seriously. Working in a crèche or nursery is considered a proper, admirable career and requires a degree in "puericulture". Druckerman soon begins to see the care-givers at her daughter's crèche as the "Rhodes scholars of baby care".
But however much she admires "the easy, calm authority" French parents seem to possess when enforcing the cadre, the waiting and the varied diet, will Druckerman manage it herself? Her efforts to do so add a compelling narrative to this fascinating study of French parenting.
• Michele Hanson's What the Grown-Ups Were Doing is published by Simon & Schuster.
• This article was relaunched on 20 January 2012, after temporarily being taken down in line with an embargo, and includes the correct name of the reviewer.