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…so before the book, before any of this — what were parents in France actually doing that the rest of us weren’t?

The promise was right there in the title — have kids the French way and not have them take over your life. Which is either a reassurance or a provocation, depending on the week you are having. And the paper had been arguing about it since the eighties, so it was never really a fight about France.

…and that is the part that travels, long after the book stops being the point.

…and she gives you an image that everyone who reads the book seems to keep. I want to ask you about that one.

The parent should be a giraffe looking at their child as if they were a teeny tiny ant.

Far enough away to see the whole thing, and close enough that it still matters what you do…

…and by the time the book came out, the argument had stopped being French against American. It was just parents.

Everyone could agree that parents were really lost.

That was the one thing both halves of it had in common — the same worry in two languages…

…so what does the state actually change, when it decides to be in the room with you?

You can do everything the book says and still be worn through, because the thing that decides the day is not technique. As a parent, you exist in a wide world with more or less support, and the difference between those two worlds is mostly whose money is in the room.

…which is why the same advice lands so differently on two sides of one border.