The idea is marvelous. “Bringing Up Bébé” promises to teach us how to raise the perfect children produced by the “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua without the fuss of having to chain them to the piano or throw them out of the house. And it aims to satisfy our desire for French finishing school, which started with Mireille Guiliano’s 2004 blockbuster, “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”  Few books could live up, and Pamela Druckerman’s, unfortunately, does not. Much of the so-called French child rearing wisdom compiled here is obvious. The French believe, Ms. Druckerman writes, that pregnant women should be “calm and sensible.” They have also figured out that you shouldn’t give in to your child’s tantrum, and that it’s important for little kids to say “Bonjour.”  She goes on: French parents “treat ‘adult time’ not as an occasional, hard-won privilege, but as a basic human need.” And: “They spend a lot of time telling their kids what’s permissible and what’s not.”  Ms. Druckerman, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, moved to Paris in 2003 to be with her British boyfriend (now husband) and has given birth there to a daughter and twin boys. As a new mom among all those uncannily confident Parisian women, she’s not too sure of herself, and who would be?  This makes her a likable guide. One day on the Metro she is struck by how much living in France has changed her when she instinctively backs away from a man she takes to be deranged. “On reflection, I realize my only evidence for this is that he’s wearing shorts,” she writes.  But it’s as if being a parent in another culture had made everything the mamans say sound revelatory to Ms. Druckerman. It’s the linguistic equivalent of wearing beer goggles.  Not that there aren’t plenty of cultural differences between the United States and France. We’re talking about a country that, in some cases, will help pick up the tab for a tummy tuck. And depending on a new mom’s response to the question, “Is monsieur happy?” doctors may prescribe perineal re-education. “What I can best describe as assisted crunches for the crotch,” Ms. Druckerman helpfully explains. (This personal training is also covered by the national health care system.)  In all seriousness, the support Frenchwomen get from the state may be the only contrast that matters. In France there’s national paid maternity leave, subsidies for nannies and high-quality day care, and free preschool. With that kind of help, you’d be a less frazzled parent too. Mostly the distinctions are a matter of emphasis. French parents are especially disciplined about enforcing rules that affect their own pleasure. They speak loftily about establishing a strict framework for their children’s behavior that still leaves room for plenty of freedom within the limits. This allows for a child’s “blossoming,” we are told. It also allows parents a chance for a smoke.  During my own extended visits to Paris I’ve noticed — and Ms. Druckerman confirms — that French parents don’t set foot in playgrounds. I, too, would have loved to have roosted outside the fence, sipping a café crème amid dapples of sunlight, but instead I’ve had to run around, a bodyguard to twin toddlers of my own, protecting them from all those unsupervised natives whose “blossoming” evidently means “violently shoving smaller kids down the slide.”  Sure, that’s one mother’s report, but Ms. Druckerman’s evidence often goes no deeper. For a reporter whose last book, “Lust in Translation,” was about infidelity in different cultures, Ms. Druckerman is oddly unjournalistic here. “Bringing Up Bébé” is essentially a series of generalizations based on her American and French friends and her own experiences as a mother.  At one point she declares that Americans don’t cultivate patience as assiduously as French parents do. For support she quotes what someone said at a party. The French host recalled a weekend years before when he went away with an American family and was appalled by the kids’ behavior. They were said to have interrupted the adults midsentence and taken food out of the refrigerator willy-nilly.  This is an enduring frustration. When Ms. Druckerman has trouble being firm with her children, parents in all 50 states are indicted. When a French friend has more success than she has keeping her baby from pulling books off the shelf, this supposedly reveals an “enormous cultural gap.”  By the same token, the Parisian infants she knows (how many can there be?) sleep through the night, and the entire country gets a medal. “I do hear about French kids who take a year to start doing their nights,” she allows. “But the truth is, over many years in France, I don’t meet them.”  The advice can be contradictory. She quotes one French manual that encourages pregnant women not to give in to cravings, only later to cite “French Women Don’t Get Fat” on how to stay thin by indulging: “Pretending such pleasures don’t exist, or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain.”  Speaking of food — and here I must say that “Bringing Up Bébé” persuaded me that the French really are superior. At one point Ms. Druckerman sits in on the menu planning for the state-run day care system. The main course proposed for one Friday is a white fish called colin in dill sauce, with a side of organic potatoes à l’anglaise. Later “there’s a long discussion of rhubarb.”  Chicken nuggets are never mentioned.  Susannah Meadows writes the Newly Released column for The Times.
In âBringing Up BÃ©bÃ©,â Pamela Druckerman shares the wisdom of French child rearing that she gleaned from her own experiences as an American mother in Paris.