Parlez vous Francais?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2139117/Wine-cigarettes-lots-sex-Billionaire-author-advocates-parenting-French-way-sparks-anger-mothers.html

Just had to laugh when I saw the above article in the UK Daily Mail. As you probably know if you're a regular reader of my blog, my older daughter Alex had a son in March and it has been a real adjustment. It's a lifechanger for her, her husband, their marriage, her job, and well, basically everything. She decided after three days that breastfeeding just wasn't going to work. There is such pressure these days in her generation to nurse the baby for a long time, and they all seem miserable with it. Her friends call it "Mommy jail" and in my day we just called it "Baby fog." The first few months, you eat, sleep and breathe baby and it's overwhelming to say the least. I've been counseling her for weeks that it WILL get better, that the baby WILL start sleeping, that he will start reacting instead of seem like a sack of potatoes, that his tummy will finish developing and the fussiness will stop, and that her life with the baby will become her new norm.
Then the article (and book) written by a French woman says that women need to mother like the French with "Wine, cigarettes and lots of sex." That is hysterical!! Leave it to the French to sound so, well, cliche French! And it IS true that there are lots of current books out there telling American women how we need to mother like the fill-in-the-blank, such as the Europeans, the Norwegians, the Asians, you name it. It's hard enough to figure it all out without yet another book to confuse you. Or you can just do like the French - drink wine, smoke cigarettes and have lots of sex.
Oui, oui...