The Daily - Is 'Gentle Parenting' Ruining French Children?

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

“Traditional” French parenting is built on a foundation of firm boundaries, strictness and punishment for misbehavior. Within these rules, children are also allowed freedom and autonomy, which som...e say results in both well-behaved children and stress-free parents. In recent years, though, American-style “gentle” or “positive” parenting has gained a toehold in the country, unsettling decades of orthodoxy about the best way to raise a French child. It has prompted a fierce debate, with both sides accusing the other of being harmful. In today’s episode, Madeleine Schwartz, a journalist who lives in Paris, talks with Michael Barbaro about the dispute over parenting styles in France and what it says about the eternal search for the “right” way to raise children. On Today’s Episode: Madeleine Schwartz is a journalist and editor in Paris. Background Reading: Did American-Style ‘Gentle Parenting’ Spoil French Children? Art Credit: Illustration by Kimberly Elliott Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Starting point is 00:00:02 From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily on Sunday. In France, the question of how best to raise children has long seemed like a settled matter. After all, the country's reputation for strict parenting is revered for its results. Well-behaved children who, from toddlerdom, cleaned their plates right down to the strong, smelly cheese.
Starting point is 00:00:34 But a new generation of French parents are questioning those methods, adopting a gentler, more American approach, and igniting a fierce national debate that has both sides accusing the other of being harmful to kids. Today, my conversation with reporter Madeline Schwartz on why this subject has become so divisive in France and what it tells us about the eternal search for the right way to raise children.
Starting point is 00:01:10 It's Sunday, August 9th. Madeline Schwartz, welcome to the Sunday Daily. Hi, it's nice to be here. So you are based in Paris, and from what I understand, this is a subject, the one we're going to be talking about, that is very close to you because you yourself were raised in both the United States and there in France. Yeah, so my mom is American and my dad is French. They split up when I was just a baby.
Starting point is 00:01:45 And so I grew up going between both New York and Paris and went to school in both places. Well, I would argue that that makes you the ideal guest for this conversation that we're about to have about French versus American style parenting because you've experienced both of these cultures in a pretty meaningful way. Yeah, well, I've certainly seen. a lot. I'm sure you have. Okay. I'm curious, when were you first made aware of this kind of fierce debate in France about parenting? Yeah, so a few years ago, a woman named Caroline Goldman started appearing everywhere in French media. She's a psychologist, and she was being interviewed in Le Monde. She was writing op-eds. And, good-jour-charlene Goldman. She was on television.
Starting point is 00:02:40 Caroline Goldman, it really seemed like she had become an inescapable figure of the zeitgeist. And she's a very charismatic, very media-friendly person who also carries with her a certain amount of mystique, in large part because her father is a very famous pop star named Jean-Jacques Goldman, who I don't know who the right analogy would be, but is sort of like Francis Bruce Springsteak. He's a very, very beloved celebrity who is retreated from the public eye. And so any time she would talk, people would really get very excited to hear from her and try to kind of analyze what she was saying. And what was she saying? We'll tell her a very bad history on the parentality, which is vandeuse, but who is all the full realist.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Every appearance she had had a very clear point, which is that she felt that children were being in many ways misled by their parents, that what we might know, know in the United States as gentle parenting had essentially led a generation of French children astray and that it was time to go back to a more disciplinary form of education. So this is quite surprising because we here in the U.S. tend to think about French parenting as quite rulebound. And the word gentle is not the one I would apply to that tradition.
Starting point is 00:04:10 Well, for a very long time, French parenting has been very rule-bound and very defined by specific rules that children must follow in order to be integrated into society. And I think that a lot of Americans who know about French parenting do so because of a book called Bringing Up Baby, which was published in 2012 by Pamela Druckerman, who herself is an American journalist who moved to France and had three kids here and has been a huge bestseller since. Right. I read this book even before I had. children, it was just a mega thing here in the U.S. 10, 15 years ago. But for those who did not read it, just remind us what the book did. Yeah, so it's really an homage to French parenting. One of the things that I think made it so interesting to American parents is that it describes how you can have kids, according to the French way, and not have them take over your life.
Starting point is 00:05:06 That French parenting is really a mix between, you know, encouraging children. to live by certain rules, but also giving them a lot of freedom. And that, in turn, creates children who are a well-behaved, polite, eat the food on their plate, and also, you know, you can have kids and go on and live your adult life.
Starting point is 00:05:25 And as I recall, the revelation, the aha moment for, especially American parents who were reading Druckerman's book, was that this could be a model for parents who felt like they were drowning in their obligations to their kids. Yeah, a lot of what Drugerman talks about is how to raise children in a way that gives them, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:50 freedom to explore, but also gives parents freedom to just be. And that's also reflected in a lot of the French structural support around parenting. That means that, you know, there's child care from the time that a baby turns two and a half months. And even the official French guidance for having a child under free really emphasizes the importance of relationships between parents that, you know, having a child doesn't mean giving up on your couple. And all of that, I think, it feels to Americans very different from what the very intensive, all-consuming way that a lot of Americans expect to and end up raising their kids. Give us some examples of how dominant that philosophy became in France. Yeah. Well, when I was working on my piece, I came across a really hilarious children's book called On Pupac, which broadly speaking means that's not allowed.
Starting point is 00:06:54 And, you know, there's no story. It's just pictures of everything a toddler can't do play with their father's beard, you know, throw water out of the tub. And that is a, you know, if you look at that book on Amazon, it has like 400 positive reviews. And even in the culture, the way that parenting is portrayed is very different. There was a big movie about 10 years ago called Papa U Maman, which means daddy or mommy, basically, which is about a custody fight. I mean, it's a comedy, but it's about a very intense custody fight between a divorcing couple, except that in this case, each of them wants the other parent to get custody so that they can go off
Starting point is 00:07:32 and live their lives and pursue their career dreams elsewhere. And divorce. Pardon? We divorce, that. But who's, oh, well, he's, oh, well, he, you know, they're fighting to not raise their children, essentially. Exactly. And that was a box office hit.
Starting point is 00:07:51 And what are the origins, based on your reporting, of this more, you could call it detached, you could call it balanced style of French parenting? Where did it come from? So a lot of parenting advice really comes from these very long, very French traditions of psychoanalysis. And France is a country that really loves its psychoanalyst. And one in particular has really shaped generations of parenting. A woman named Francoise Doltou, who Drummerman also talks about in her book, bringing up baby.
Starting point is 00:08:25 She wrote a lot of books. She also had a very popular radio program. And she really put forward, you know, this sort of double way of looking at parenting, where on the one hand, she was the person in France who really revolutionized the idea of children's rights, that children were people, you could talk to children like people. And on the other hand, her view of the world was very hierarchical. She was essentially a Catholic, bourgeois, grandmother, who really adhered to a lot of France. is the most rigid cultural rules.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Just give us some examples of that structure. What it actually looks like? Yeah, so, I mean, take bedtime. I think, you know, traditionally there's been a sense that, you know, the child is going to go to bed at a very specific hour that's setting the schedule for his day, and that also allows parents to then go off and have a conversation, have dinner, have a glass of wine,
Starting point is 00:09:26 and live their life as two adults rather than as two parents. Right. So not falling asleep with a child the way I did last night and that I frankly do many nights a week. That is not the French model, no. Well, beyond bedtime, what best illustrates this philosophy? Another big area is food and eating. Obviously, France is a culture that takes food very, very seriously. from a very early age children are expected to eat like adults, to eat vegetables, to eat complicated foods, and to eat them at set meal times. Even in, you know, any daycare that you will go to, a child who's just barely one is likely going to be served, you know, a three-course meal including cheese. The idea is that from the beginning you want to be encouraging kids to eat like adults, to eat healthily and a diverse range of different flavor.
Starting point is 00:10:26 and tastes, you're not going to be content to have them order off the kids' venue. Right. So that means not snacking on chicken nuggets and mac and cheese all day, which is very much the American model, if we're being honest. No chicken nuggets, no toddler little slurpy pouches. It's complex meals from a pretty young age. Right. So given the strength of this power.
Starting point is 00:10:56 French parenting tradition that is focused on rules and three-course meals at age one and making sure that a kid is in his or her place. When did this new way of thinking about parenting that Caroline Goldman sees as problematically permissive start to emerge in France and challenge what you're describing? So gentle parenting or positive parenting, as it's known, here in France, starts making its way to France in the 90s. And it comes from English-speaking countries, from the United States, from Australia. And contrary to what had been the norm in France, it's really focused on centering the child. So in any situation, the way that it's practiced in France, you're really asking, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:43 what does the child need in this situation and going from there. Right, it's child-centric, by definition. Exactly. And I would say that the influence of positive education and gentle parenting really picks up steam with social media because that space is full of people, some of whom may or may not have a scientific background, giving advice to parents. And obviously a tired parent, that's often the first place they're going to look. Right. And as we know, once you click on one of those wheels, suddenly you're getting a lot of those videos. Oh, absolutely. Since reporting this story, my Instagram is just, I can't even look at it. Just incoherently discordant parenting advice.
Starting point is 00:12:30 Well, I just know that no matter what I'm doing, I'm doing wrong. Well, who are maybe the biggest figures or figure promoting positive parenting in France? Someone who is a big figure in the positive education movement in France is a woman named Isabel Fiore. She's 68 now. She's been a big presence in the French parenting space for a long time, and she's very, very widely read and known, very successful. One of her books sold half a million copies. She is really omnipresent, you know, giving advice on television, on Instagram, on podcasts. So when we say the parentality positive, it's like if it's a method. She's a really unusual and interesting figure. You know, she says that she came to positive parenting because of her own.
Starting point is 00:13:23 own parents who were abused as children. Interesting. And wanted to do it differently and that she, inspired by them, got very interested in positive parenting. And what's a specific example of the kind of, quote, positive parenting that she is promoting? So one of her big things is that a child under three doesn't understand the word no. and that actually saying no to a child under three is just going to begin to set off his or her stress response. And so if you want to tell a child, don't do this, you have to frame it in a positive way. So instead of don't throw your hat on the ground, it becomes, let's keep our hat on.
Starting point is 00:14:08 Instead of, don't open the door, it becomes, let's keep the door closed. Whenever a child is acting out, the parent should immediately start to think, like, what is the child, experiencing that led them to behave this way. So in one of the interviews I watched with her, she's asked about a mom who's changing her child. I think it's a son and the child has started to hit her. And so what should the mom do in that situation? And she says, you know, you say stop to the child. But instead of saying hitting your mom is bad, you should pause and think, okay, what have I? What has the mom done that could have inadvertently or not encouraged this behavior. And for the diaper changing, you know, she would say, okay, well, actually lying down flat,
Starting point is 00:14:54 being changed, that's a situation where the child has no power. And so in order to get them to stop hitting, you have to start giving them a degree of autonomy by either having them participate in the process or changing them standing up, and then they'll stop hitting their mom. So the thinking here is basically replace a lot of that traditional philosophy. about rules and discipline with more empathy, more mutual respect, more sensitivity around what the child is going through. Yeah, and the positive parenters say that positive parenting is not permissive parenting. There still are rules, but rather saying you're going to try to explain why the rule
Starting point is 00:15:44 exists or why behavior isn't allowed. and if someone acts out, the move isn't to punish the child, but rather try to understand why they acted out. Right. And think perhaps a little bit about what the parent may have done, as you said, to trigger the behavior, which doesn't sound all that traditionally French. Well, I think it's not for nothing that there's been a fair amount of pushback against a lot of this philosophy and, you know, in large part of generational divide
Starting point is 00:16:12 about who is choosing to follow one set of rules and guidance and who's choosing. another set. Right. Of course, this is why we're making the episode, because it feels like this positive parenting movement has caught on in France and so much so that there's now a backlash. Is that been your experience? And if it is, just describe it. Yeah, I mean, I think when you go somewhere where there are young kids you do hear, a lot of the effects of advice such as the ones that Fyoda and her colleagues give. I mean, one very obvious one is when kids want ice cream, and it wasn't an appropriate time for ice cream. It used to be, you know, no, that's it.
Starting point is 00:16:48 And now you hear parents saying, it's not time for ice cream now. We'll have ice cream after the meal. But first, you have to eat your green beans, and then you can have ice cream. And, of course, I'm only saying this once, but I think anyone who's been around small kids knows that that exchange can happen
Starting point is 00:17:03 two, three, four, five, six. 100 times, yes. So anecdotally, you're seeing the infiltration of this new style. Yeah. And it's not just anecdotally. This has really become part of the French official guidance for young children as well, so much so that last year, for example, the French government put out new guidelines for people who work in daycares or who watch young children. And in those guidelines, it states very explicitly that if a child misbehaves, punishment of any kind is not allowed, including, for example, a timeout. Wow. Not even a time out when a kid is really crossing the line.
Starting point is 00:17:48 Yeah, and that's part of what gets someone like Caroline Goodman so up in arms, because she says tools like timeout are really essential for raising young children. You know, if you can't use a timeout, there's no way that they'll be able to understand that they've done something wrong. For her and for the people around her and who think like her, this is why it's time to have a wider conversation about whether positive parenting has gone too far. All right, well, we're going to take a very quick break and be right back after a short timeout. So Madeline, let's talk about what this pushback led by Carolyn Goldman,
Starting point is 00:18:51 sorry, American pronunciation, looks like once she makes the decision that this positive parenting movement has gone too far. Yeah, so Goldman is someone who's not without controversy. She's made some polarizing statements about mental health, saying, for example, that depression is an illness caused by a lack of love.
Starting point is 00:19:15 Hmm. But that's not really why people gravitate towards her. They're really drawn to what she has to say about positive education and gentle parenting. Which is what exactly? Yeah. So Goldman works as a therapist for kids in a suburb of Paris, right to the south of Paris. And she has said that about 10 years ago, she began to see an explosion of behavioral issues
Starting point is 00:19:42 that she believes were not tied to anything intrinsic to the children, but were tied to essentially bad parenting, that parents were letting go of their authority. And she's seeing this in her own practice. Yes, that she's seeing, you know, kids who are hitting, kids who are not able to sit through a meal, and that all of this really has to do with the way that they were raised. She said, you know, essentially encouragement is great. Love is so important, but what parents really need are setting limits and boundaries, and that the kinds of things that positive parenting encourages, like, you know, for example, repeating the same thing over and over
Starting point is 00:20:22 to children is not good for children because it doesn't teach them what a limit is. And it's also not good for parents because it leads to parental burnout. And she's written two books about this. One is a guide for, you know, clinical practitioners. And one is a guide for parents, which is called go to your room, which I think gives a general sense of her philosophy. You know, in both of those, she talks about her practice and what she's seeing. She uses a lot of tests involving drawings. If a child draws everyone in their family the same size, you know, that might be for her a sign that the parents aren't really showing themselves to be authority figures to their kids. The parents should be twice as tall as the child. She even uses, I mean, I don't know where this gets us on the tallness scale, but she uses
Starting point is 00:21:11 this metaphor of the giraffe and the aunt. And so the parent should be a giraffe looking. looking at their child as if they were a teeny tiny aunt. And if the child misbehaves, you know, they stand tall and calmly just set the rules. Mm-hmm. From 20 feet in the air, right, just like a giraffe. Exactly. Madeline, how many people in the psychiatric or psychological world of France are joining Goldman in this few people? in this viewpoint?
Starting point is 00:21:47 So Goldman is definitely not alone in this. And in fact, in 2002, she and over 350 other early childhood experts wrote an open letter in Le Figaro saying that too much positive parenting was harming children and that kids had been essentially abandoned by adults with an exclusively empathic attitude. She also has numerous students who I talk to who really follow her set of rules. and who told me, you know, that in many cases, what they're seeing in their clinics or with their patients isn't necessarily
Starting point is 00:22:22 that the child has a particular set of issues, but that the parents actually are the ones who need more guidance. So she sees a very straight line connection between the importation of this positive parenting style, this empathetic approach from parenting, to a set of problems she's seeing over and over again with misbehaving children and parents
Starting point is 00:22:46 who are not establishing enough firm boundaries. Yeah, absolutely, and she's been very, very vocal about that. Let me zero in on the timeout because I think it will loom very large for a lot of our listeners who are parents or remember being parented. I mean, I remember being put in timeout a bunch as a kid.
Starting point is 00:23:14 I even recall being sent to my room once during my own birthday party, which I don't personally recommend. But as a parent, I definitely have put both of my children four and five into some version of timeout when their behavior feels unacceptable.
Starting point is 00:23:35 Yeah, so Goldman, you know, really promotes the timeout as a solution to a lot of parenting issues. And she actually has often talked about sending her own daughter. She has four kids into her room during her birthday party. So it sounds like you guys would have a lot to talk about there. But the idea is really that the timeout does two important things. One, it gives the child a very clear idea of what the boundary is that they have crossed.
Starting point is 00:24:02 And two, you know, it really gives everyone exactly what it says, a time to calm down and avoid escalating the conflict. But Goldman's definition and her use of the timeout, I would say, is different from a lot of other people's. How so? So in her book, go to your room. A Bible for a timeout, it sounds like. Very much about the timeout. She has a list of behaviors that should be forbidden from the age of one.
Starting point is 00:24:28 So, you know, already a really young age. And those include things like complaining, making too much noise, throwing dishes on the floor, opening the fridge, stealing the remote. And she says, you know, that if after having explained one, two, or three times, that that's not acceptable to the child, then a timeout is warranted. And she's pretty dogmatic about it. So in that case, you know, she says you don't need to justify the time out. You don't enter into a discussion. And if the child pushes back, especially an older child, then you can tell that child, okay, you've earned 20 more minutes of timeout. And she finds this to be effective.
Starting point is 00:25:08 Yeah, not only effective, but the book really suggests that if you use the timeout according to what she suggests, you're not only going to have children who know the rules, but polite, well-behaved children. And she has, you know, examples of, for example, a young girl who's really rude about everything that her mom cooks. And every time her mom gives her something, she says that she doesn't want it. And after a few rounds of time out, she's pretty happily eating everything, including the food that everyone, one admits is like really not well done. The food critics in the house. Just make sure I understand what's different about her timeouts than the traditional
Starting point is 00:25:52 notions of them. Yeah. So, you know, I think there are two main differences. One, you're starting with very, very, very young children. A one-year-old, that's not a very old child. Right. And two, starting at the age of four, she really recommends longer timeouts. so at least 30 minutes for a child over the age of four,
Starting point is 00:26:12 which goes against a lot of what has been studied about timeout, which are generally very short periods where a child is either in their room or in another space. Well, what are the positive parenters saying about Goldman's view of timeouts? I have to imagine they disagree with it, and especially because the French government's own guidance says this is not a good idea. Yes, so they are very, very against this. And they say the timeout is the wrong solution, especially this version, which involves very young children and very long timeouts, that it's not a calming way of dealing with a problem.
Starting point is 00:26:51 It's isolating for the child and may even go against the rights of a child. And actually, a few years ago, 280 other early childhood experts, not the ones that sided with Goldman, but the ones who are against her, signed a different open letter in Le Monde, a different paper. this time going against the timeout. So they are very concerned about this. Just to keep score, that's 280 experts versus 350 or so on the other side, which may or may not mean much of anything. But what's fascinating to me is this open war of open letters and how much in French society people are passionately debating the best way to race.
Starting point is 00:27:38 children. Yeah, and I think it gets at all sorts of larger questions. I mean, one of the interesting things that came up in my reporting is this other wrinkle to the debate, which is that in 2019, France passed a big law, which is colloquially known as the anti-spanking law. And it forbids physical and psychological violence against children, which I'll note, you know, is still legal in big parts of the United States. But one of the things that's confusing about this law is it uses this term of ordinary educational violence. That is outlawed.
Starting point is 00:28:14 But it never defines what ordinary educational violence is. So you have a situation in which Goldman and her allies are saying, of course, corporal punishment, of course, yelling at a child, belittling them. That's all really bad. But the timeout is totally acceptable. And on the other hand, other related childhood educators who are saying that timeout is as bad or should be avoided as much as those
Starting point is 00:28:40 other examples. So in their minds, something like a timeout is ordinary educational violence, essentially. Exactly. So it sounds like this law, in combination with those French government standards you mentioned earlier, are probably entrenching both sides of this now very public disagreement in France about the best way to parent. And I have to imagine that this is putting French parents into something of a bind as they try to figure out the best way to do their job as parents. Oh, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I found really interesting when I was reporting this piece and talking to both sides of the debate is that everyone could agree that parents were really lost. But each side believed it that it was the fault of the others who,
Starting point is 00:29:30 we're giving the wrong kind of advice. What happens for parents is, of course, everything that's being said is so incredibly contradictory. You know, be kinder, be more firm, say yes, say it no. And what are they supposed to do with all these mixed signals? Well, we're going to take one more quick break, and when we come back, talk about what French parents are doing with those mixed signals.
Starting point is 00:29:58 So we'll pay back. So, Madeline, how exactly, based on your reporting, are parents in France navigating all of this right now? Yeah, so I think that part of the reason that this debate is so entrenched is that it brings up all sorts of other questions that French parents are really navigating right now about, you know, what is the place of children in society? and is it up to society to accommodate children or is it up to the children to accommodate the world of adults? And I would say that traditionally in France, having kids is not really a big part of one's public persona. It's not something that people really talk about. It's not something that's totally socially valued. And the work of having children and raising children is sort of hidden.
Starting point is 00:30:59 And part of the reason why I think this debate is so. lively is because we're at a kind of inflection point in the way that parents do want to raise their children. Hmm. Just explain that inflection point. Yeah. So over the course of my reporting, I talked to a sociologist who studies parenting in France who coined this term called parental pessimism, which I don't know if I could think of a more French concept than that. But I thought it was really interesting. You know, he said that one of the reasons why French parents are so overwhelmed and stressed is that they're spending a lot of time, obviously, with their children, raising their children, thinking about their children, but the world that's valued is the world of jobs and
Starting point is 00:31:43 work. And I think you do see a change generationally of people who want to do things like bring their kids to restaurants and talk about their kids and things that I think a few generations ago weren't really very popular or very common in France in the same way. So at the same time that France is debating how best to parent, French parents are asking whether French society is putting enough value on the very act of parenting. Do you see the debate as causing that question to be asked? I think it's definitely one of the reasons why this debate has lasted so long and why people get so incensed and emotional about it. I think there are a lot of changes that French parents feel about the way that they were raised and the way that they want to raise their children. And no one's really figured out the solution just yet.
Starting point is 00:32:43 And so it just brings up a lot of emotions for everyone. You know, when I was reporting this piece, I just happened to go to a party with a lot of young parents. And you know how it is, you go to a party and you mention what you're talking about. And people were so divided. Some people were very much, you know, Goldman is great. Positive parenting has gone too far. Parents really need to, you know, remind themselves that they're adults, that they have lives and thoughts outside of being parents. And, you know, on the other side, people saying this is essentially child abuse.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Wow. I guess this somewhat tortured party that you went to where all the parents are disagreeing about how to parent strikes me because when we all read Bringing Up Bebe a decade or so ago here in America, there was, I think, a somewhat broad sense of envy that the French had figured out parenting.
Starting point is 00:33:42 And from what you're describing, the current situation, the current dispute, makes me think that the parenting grass wasn't really all that greener to begin with. Yeah, I mean,
Starting point is 00:33:54 interestingly, you know, when you talk to French parents, they are often sometimes envious of other countries, in particular Sweden. Hmm. Why? So Sweden is a country that came up a lot in my reporting, and in particular in some of the work done by the sociologist who I talked to, who talks about how in Sweden, compared to France, you know, children are just more visible in public spaces,
Starting point is 00:34:21 and there are more amenities for them. You know, you just see them more out and about. And he really links this to parental happiness. He did a study about how much parents complain about their children and found that French parents complain a huge, huge, huge amount and that there was a big difference between Sweden and France. So in Sweden, 4% of parents said that having a child limited their freedom, and in France it was almost 40.
Starting point is 00:34:52 Wow. That's a huge gap. And at the same time, the number of people actually wanting to become parents or becoming parents in France has really declined. 2025, so last year, was the first year since World War II, where there were more deaths than births in France. And actually, President Macron has now talked about wanting to have demographic rearmament. That's his term, not mine, and send letters to every 29-year-old telling them that the clock is ticking. And that it's time to make Bebes. That is time to make new French people, yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:30 Wow. I mean, do you see a connection between all these things? Parental, pessimism, declining, birth raid, a big public at times messy debate about parenting that might make the unparenting think to themselves. I don't know about that. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to draw a... direct line because, you know, this is a period where you see declining birth rates all over the world, including in the U.S. and including in Sweden where all the happy parents are.
Starting point is 00:36:04 But I think that, you know, it's kind of highlighting this larger point, which is the parenting advice really focuses on the individual decisions that a parent is going to make. But as a parent, you exist in a wide world with, you know, more or less support and many, many challenges. And that really shapes everyone's experience. Right. The infrastructure that you're describing may shape the experience of parenting as much, if not more than whatever style of parenting you choose to deploy. I think about child care in the United States, which is, I think we can all acknowledge, woefully insufficient for the job. And as many of my colleagues at the times can tell you, when they talk to people about why the
Starting point is 00:36:50 birth rate is declining in the United States, many people will say there just isn't a solid system to help me parent. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of this is about, you know, systems rather than individual decisions. Well, I do want to end on individual decisions, because that's ultimately what we're talking about here. You are yourself a parent, and of course you were yourself parented, and you live in France. So how are Are you thinking about which side of the ledger you're going to be favoring as you approach the job? Yeah. Well, you know, I had not engaged in the world of parenting advice until I started working on this piece.
Starting point is 00:37:37 And it's kind of overwhelming how much of it there is and how contradictory it is. But I think when you're a parent, you know, there are just people telling you all the time, like what you should be doing. and ultimately you have to trust your own instinct. You can't parent by someone else's rules. Right. You listen to your inner voice, and sometimes it's good enough, which is literally one of the many philosophies that now guides parents, the good enough parent.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Yeah, and sometimes that's really just the best you can do. Well, Madeline, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Today's episode was produced by Tina Antalini, with help from Alex Barron. It was edited by Wendy Doer, with production assistance from Dahlia Haddad. It contains music by Dan Powell,
Starting point is 00:38:35 Marian Lazzano, Diane Wong, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Daniel Ramirez. That's it for the Daily on Sunday. I'm Michael Bobaro. See you tomorrow.

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