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" And as a mother of three with a full-time job, podcasts gave me the illusion of having a vibrant social life. I was constantly 'meeting' new people. My favorite hosts started to seem like friends: I could detect small shifts in their moods and tell when they were flirting with guests. "

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" The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part. "

Pamela Druckerman

Life

Women

Balance

" When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen. "

" I think, in writing a memoir, you kind of give order to your life. "

" Usually, I'm so self-absorbed that my companion could be bleeding to death, and I might not notice. "

" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

" Soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated, I got a letter from France's interior ministry informing me that I was now French. By the time it arrived, I'd been French for nearly two weeks without even knowing it. "

Pamela Druckerman

Two

Time

" When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump? "

" We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces. "

" I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it. "

" I had applied to become French - or, rather, Franco-American, as I'm now a dual citizen - partly because I could: I'd lived and paid taxes here for long enough. "

" Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.' "

" Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide. "

" I'm not an early adopter. I'll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they're practically out of date, and I won't move into a neighborhood until it's fully saturated with upscale coffee shops. "

" As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken. "

" In my 40s, I expect to finally reap the average-looking girl's revenge. I've entered the stage of life where you don't need to be beautiful; simply by being well-preserved and not obese, I would now pass for pretty. "

" The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging. "

" I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot. "

" Early childhood offerings vary, but everywhere in Europe and in Canada, they're far more generous than in the United States. Ukrainian dads may not change enough diapers, but their government offers paid maternity leave; practically free preschool; and per-baby payments equivalent to eight months of an average salary. "

" When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful. "

" When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely. "

" The French talk about education, the education of their children. They don't talk about raising kids. They talk about education. And that has nothing to do with school. It's this kind of broad description of how you raise children and what you teach them. "

" This idea - that the only way to mend the relationship post-affair is through therapy - is unique to the American script. "

" Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews. "

" French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references. "

" It's fine to discuss money in France, as long as you're complaining that you don't have enough, or boasting about getting a bargain. "

" If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami. "

" Podcasts immersed me in colloquial English and put me back in the American zeitgeist. "

Pamela Druckerman

Immersed

Back

" I'm speaking in very broad brushstrokes, but in France, there's generally this idea that you should look like the best version of the age that you are. "

Pamela Druckerman

France

You

" I've gotten used to being a foreigner. "

" Unlike the time sink of binge-watching a TV series, podcasts actually made me more efficient. Practically every dull activity - folding laundry, applying makeup - became tolerable when I did it while listening to a country singer describing his hardscrabble childhood, or a novelist defending her open marriage. "

Pamela Druckerman

Time

Childhood