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" I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently. "

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" One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves. "

Pamela Druckerman

Good

Small

Think

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

Pamela Druckerman

Immersed

Back

" Discrimination was a problem before terrorism. Now, the bad deeds of a few people have made life worse for millions. "

" What you can say, what French parents say to their kids is, 'You don't have to eat everything, honey, you just have to taste it.' And it's that tasting little by little by little that gets kids more familiar with the food and more comfortable with it and more likely to eat it the next time. "

" Your child probably won't get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it. "

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

" How hard or easy it is to raise kids, especially while working, is a big part of people's well-being everywhere. "

" The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry. "

" 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

" There's this idea in America that you can be whatever you want. That remains an ideal in terms of how you dress too - when you go shopping, you try on all possible selves and then decide. "

" I've been vacationing in western North Carolina and northern Georgia since I was a kid. I arrive, marvel at the mountains, and put on an unconvincing Southern drawl. "

" When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper. "

" 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. "

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

" Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection. "

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

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

Job

Life

" French children seem to be able to play by themselves in a way. "

" 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. "

" Childhood and adolescence are nothing but milestones: You grow taller, advance to new grades, and get your period, your driver's license, and your diploma. Then, in your 20s and 30s, you romance potential partners, find jobs, and learn to support yourself. "

" One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another. "

" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

" Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them. "

" Sometimes I just tell my kids, 'Outside of France, I'm considered completely normal.' This worked until we traveled to London. "

" I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don't necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation. "

" In the Nineties, there was all this new research into brain development, with evidence saying poor kids fall behind in school because no one is talking to them at home, no one is reading to them. And middle-class parents seized on this research. "

" I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow. "

Pamela Druckerman

Because

Rules

" 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. "

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

" The question on my husband's birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing? "