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  The reasons for the fantastic fecundity of the French are deep-rooted, going back through centuries of state policy. Throughout history, successive French governments have tended to see family matters as affairs of state, interpreting domestic policy as embracing what goes on in the conjugal bed. Even under the ancien régime, French monarchs considered their subjects’ reproductive lives a royal prerogative. The French philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755)19 observed that a lord was only as great, rich, powerful and secure as the number of his vassals, and with this principle in mind, monarchs like Louis XIV set about ensuring that they would have as many subjects as possible. Under the influence of his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis introduced in 1666 an edict exempting all men who married before the age of 20 years from paying tax until they reached 25 years; all men with ten or more living children were similarly exempt (priests and nuns excepted).20 The Revolution of 1789 swept away as many old ideas as it did heads, but the concept of big is best as far as families were concerned remained intact. The Revolutionaries, in the name of égalité, introduced various provisions to equalize the position of those who had multiple children with those who did not. These included ascending tax breaks for men with more than three and six children, and – a foretaste of what was to come in later centuries – fiscal penalties on those who were not so fruitful. The French Revolutionaries also introduced one of the earliest examples of child benefit: every child under ten received a payment of 2 livres a month, until attaining that age.21

  The treaty does not state that France will have many children, but it is the first thing that should have been written there. For if France does not have large families, it will be in vain that you put all the finest clauses in the treaty, that you take away all the German guns, France will be lost because there will be no more French.

  GEORGES CLEMENCEAU, FRENCH STATESMAN, ON THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 1919

  The nineteenth century saw – in Britain as much as in France and the rest of Europe – a shrinkage in family sizes, as writers such as Thomas Malthus preached pessimistically about the evils of spawning more ill-fated offspring than one could afford, flooding the crowded cities with an overflow of rank bodies and malnourished mouths to feed. But France’s suppressed propensity for self-propagation was to resurface in the twentieth century, with added vigour, after the ravages of the two world wars. The French population had suffered significant losses on the battlefield, especially in the trenches of the Western Front in the First World War, and required replenishing. What was needed, in de Gaulle’s celebrated words of March 1945, was d’appeler à la vie les douze millions de beaux bébés qu’il faut à la France en dix ans (‘to bring into being the twelve million bouncing babies France needs in the space of ten years’). It was made quite clear, to French women in the postwar years, that the most patriotic thing they could do was to reproduce. Hence le baby boom. Posters sprang up featuring Madonna-like materfamilias surrounded by six or more children, with the slogan La France a besoin d’enfants (‘France needs children’).22 A law of 1920 had already made abortion and contraception criminal offences; and in Vichy France in 1942, illegal termination of a pregnancy was declared a ‘crime against the state’ and made punishable by death. Of course, this just boosted trade for backstreet abortionists, who were given the grim soubriquet of faiseuses d’ange or ‘angel-makers’. It was a risky profession – in 1943, Marie-Louise Giraud was guillotined for having performed 27 abortions in the area of Cherbourg.*

  * Those under the impression that the guillotine was a grisly form of execution confined to the period of the Revolutionary Terror will be amazed to learn that the last case of its use in France was in 1977, just before the abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Although no longer in use, the guillotine is still an object of awe and dread for many French people; some commentators advance this as a reason why one virtually never sees sash windows, ubiquitous in English town houses, in France, where they go by the graphic name of fenêtres à guillotine.

  Because birth control was outlawed, condoms in the postwar period in France were strictly under-the-counter purchases – although pharmacy catalogues did refer discreetly to ‘hygiene products for men’. This probably explains the widespread popularity of the bidet in France until well into the twentieth century,* as a source of flushing out not only germs, but seeds which were at risk of being sown into the wrong furrow.

  * The role of the bidet in the French bathroom is examined in detail in the later chapter dedicated to this intriguing – and to the Anglo-Saxons mysterious – piece of sanitary ware (see here).

  A special series of medals – La Médaille d’honneur de la famille française – was created in 1920, to honour mothers who had raised multiple children ‘in a worthy fashion’. A bronze medal was awarded to the mother who had raised, in worthy fashion, four or five children; silver for six or seven; and gold for eight or more. The award is given in France annually to this day: it is usually a platform for the president to vaunt his latest political achievements in family policy. (France is not unique among pro-natalist countries in distinguishing champion breeders. The Nazi regime awarded the ‘Cross of Honour of the German Mother’ to fecund and suitably Aryan recipients, and the former Soviet Union had several awards for outstanding ovaries. Even today, the Russian Federation bestows the ‘Order of Parental Glory’ on worthy couples raising seven or more children as good Russian citizens.) La France a besoin d’enfants has in fact become something of a national motto: in the 1980s, a government publicity campaign was run under the slogan, with posters featuring assorted gurgling bundles of joy under such headlines as ‘Life isn’t just about sex’.

  Is France in the twenty-first century as baby-crazy as ever? It would seem so. Luckily, one is no longer guillotined for performing an abortion (just as well, since 200,000 of them take place annually in France), and since 1967 it has been legal to take the Pill.23 But, while two-thirds of French women today use some method of contraception, the French state doesn’t rush to the aid of those seeking to stop nature’s course: the public advertising of condoms was only finally permitted in 1987, in the heat of the AIDS crisis, and even now many contraceptive pills are not reimbursed by the French health service. Abortion costs are not at present fully repaid by the state (a subject of proposed reform), and abortion itself is only available up to 12 weeks of pregnancy for non-medical reasons (as opposed to 25 weeks in the UK). The overall message from the Republic, in fact, is still that it is one’s civic duty to go forth, be fruitful and multiply.

  A country which has a high proportion of children and young people is a country which progresses, a country which adapts, a country which innovates, and a country which prepares for the future with confidence.

  PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC, SPEECH DURING PRESENTATION OF THE MEDAL OF THE FRENCH FAMILY, MAY 2003

  But the French state’s killer weapon in its baby-making arsenal is more subtle than a poster campaign, and sharper than a guillotine. From the postwar period onwards, successive French governments have adopted a stealthily effective policy to encourage the patter of tiny feet on apartment floors: that is, to put money in the hands that feed them. Spending upwards of 27.5 per cent of GDP per capita on each child, France in 2011 spent more on families than any other EU country.24 Those happy families with more than three children – i.e. those who acquire the blessed status of famille nombreuse – immediately qualify for an avalanche of benefits, from reduced-rate public transport to tax breaks and preferential treatment in almost any administrative queue. In no other European country are there so many benefits and tax breaks for large families: child benefit in 2012 started at a generous €127.68 per month for two children (naturally, there is no benefit for having just one child), and €163.59 for each additional child, paid until the child reaches the age of twenty years.25 Income tax is calculated on a scale that reduces according to the number of children: France’s famous and unique ‘family quotient’. From the age of three months, every child in pri
nciple is entitled to go to the local crèche, open all day, run to a high standard and means-tested (although in practice there is often a pitched battle for crèche places, particularly in areas of high demand. However, state-subsidized child-minders exist for those unable to obtain a crèche place). From the age of three, every child is entitled to a free place at the local nursery school (France has one of the youngest ages for starting school in Europe). Local mairies operate school pick-up and drop-off services, and evening care for children after school until as late as 7.30 p.m. During the school holidays, the mairie will also run a maison de loisirs or holiday activity centre, open from 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., inclusive of meals and with a range of activities, for a reasonable (and subsidized) charge. All in all, while France may not be at quite the level of the Nordic countries in terms of winning the Order of Glory for Child Propagation,26 it certainly leads other European countries in the league and comes in for an Order of Merit. And unlike the Anglo-Saxon countries – which tend to see social benefits as the degrading resort of the poor – the biggest winners in the French system, particularly on the tax front, have traditionally been the fecund families of the comfortably-off bourgeoisie.

  Will France be able to pay for another generation of bouncing babies in these increasingly straitened times? Only time will tell. But just remember one thing. Next time you feel like throwing yourself out of the window after reading yet another eulogy about the quasi-miraculous ability of French women to have an enormous brood, hold down a glamorous job, get their hair done at lunchtime, and go out to dinner with their husbands, just remember that behind that supposedly miraculous achievement of Parental Glory lies a subsidized crèche, subsidized child-minder, usually excellent free local school, subsidized after-school activity centre, several hundred euros per month of child benefit, a reduced income-tax rate, and… a whopping tax bill for those beasts of burden, the black sheep of the happy French family: the Inglorious Order of the Childless.

  Myth Evaluation: True.

  FRENCH CHILDREN DON’T THROW FOOD

  ‘As well behaved as a picture’

  (Sage comme une image = ‘as good as gold’).

  FRENCH SAYING

  This is a relative newcomer to the pantheon of French mythology. It is a myth that appeared overnight, with the publication of a best-selling book of this title in 2012 by Pamela Druckerman (although, unlike French Women Don’t Get Fat, it does not appear to have been trademarked, at least not as yet).*

  * The best-seller French Children Don’t Throw Food (Doubleday, 2012) has predictably inspired a whole new breed of parenting books, eulogizing the allegedly saintly virtues of French children in all spheres from eating to discipline.

  According to this book and its imitators, it is not only French women who have an innate sense of ‘balance’ and restraint. French children are poised and self-controlled, too. They never say non to their dinner of escargots de Bourgogne. They do not throw public tantrums in the park, or charge off from the dinner table to cut the hair off their baby sisters’ Barbie dolls, like their hooligan Anglo-Saxon peers. They politely join in with adults in debates about French philosophy, always say please and thank you and ask to be allowed to leave the table. Even as small babies, according to these new parenting bibles, French children show a mature consideration for others. They miraculously sleep through the night from the age of three months, unselfishly enabling their mothers to slip on a sexy number and sneak off with their husbands – thus proving that, for French women at least, reproduction does not put an end to la séduction. In fact, the myth of the preternaturally well-behaved French child appears to have established itself as a new theory of parenting. We’ve had Authoritarian Parenting, Permissive Parenting, Child-Driven Parenting, Fusion Parenting, and Chinese Parenting.27 Now, it’s French Parenting that’s all the rage. Anglo-Saxon females should prepare themselves for another bashing. Not only are they fat, inelegant and inept at cooking, but they are now apparently rubbish parents as well.

  It has to be said that Pamela Druckerman’s book is not exactly the work of a sociologist. The British weekly newspaper The Economist is of the view that ‘it sounds too good to be true.’ It suspects her of confining herself to the wealthy families of Paris. And it advises her to go visit the ‘French suburbs’ to verify whether ‘Bonjour, Madame’ is really practised out there. One could also retort that even in the posh sandpits of Neuilly, the children are far from being angels…’

  REVIEW OF FRENCH CHILDREN DON’T THROW FOOD IN THE FRENCH NEWSPAPER LE FIGARO, 23 JANUARY 2012

  This paragon-like nature of French babies and children is supposedly due to superior Gallic methods of child-raising. Exactly what these methods are and how they are superior remains somewhat ill-defined, but many of the techniques described seem suspiciously reminiscent of what used to be called ‘good old-fashioned parenting’. In truth, however, studies of French babies’ and children’s eating and sleeping habits suggest that they are not substantially different from others. Research into the sleep patterns of French babies found that 21–38 per cent of French children aged 1–2 years woke up at night,28 and a further clinical study found that 72 per cent of French children aged between 16 and 24 months had sleep issues.29 As for the much-vaunted omnivorousness of French children – their allegedly preternatural penchant for greens and all things gross to the non-French, imperfect child – a 2009 study found that many French toddlers were being given an unsuitable diet by their parents (including chips and charcuterie),30 and an estimated 25–45 per cent of French babies and toddlers have food issues at some point or other (including fussy eating).31 There has been much discussion in the French media recently about the so-called ‘baby clash’, a growing phenomenon of French couples separating in the first few months or years after the birth of a baby, owing to the pressures placed on their marriage by the arrival of a new bundle of stress into their lives. In fact, when one looks at the evidence, the French baby experience does not appear to be substantially different from that of any other harassed parents elsewhere in the world.

  So much for the feeding and sleeping habits of French babies and toddlers. As we know, babies when they become children do more than just sleep and feed, so there is also the question of behaviour to consider. Are French children more polite than their English or American counterparts, as the new French parenting bibles would have us believe? On the whole, at least in the presence of their parents in public spaces, it would seem that younger French children are. And for good reason. French parents, quite simply, are generally stricter than their English or American counterparts. France has not banned corporal punishment of children in the home, and la fessée – or smack on the bottom – is a venerable French institution, which 64 per cent of French parents in a recent survey were not ashamed to admit to using.32 A comparative study by members of the University of Wittenberg in 2007 found that nearly half of French parents had resorted to severe corporal punishment (a resounding slap on the face, beating with an object or severe beating) of their children.33 Some of the chastisements meted out in French schools, while never violent, do seem somewhat out of touch with the cutting edge of modern pedagogical practice. It is perfectly common in nursery school, for example, for naughty children to be sent to sit with their back to the class, in la chaise qui fait réfléchir.

  The French and Anglo-American education systems, in fact, are as alike as chalk and cheese. For unlike the Anglo-American system – which is designed to produce free-thinking, free-wheeling renegades – the French system is designed to produce obedient citizens of the République française. French schooling makes a fetish out of everything Anglo-American pedagogy condemns: rote learning, absorption of massive amounts of information, dictation, competition between pupils, and the ritual humiliation of those unable to keep up.34 A favourite technique of French teaching from primary school onwards is the method known as La Martinière, where arithmetical problems are called out orally to pupils, who write the answer down on a slate. They
are then told to hold up the slate, and those who have got the wrong answer are derided. As one British commentator noted, her children were trapped ‘like rats in a cage’.35

  With a strong tradition of individual achievement through effort and the idea of reliance on the state seen as a sign of failure, Anglo-American parents are expected to put huge personal effort into the rearing of their children. Getting one’s hair smeared in finger paint, digging in sandboxes, introducing one’s child to Sudoku at an early age, and killing oneself to pay enormous school fees, are considered entirely normal behaviour for British and American parents. How else will their precious offspring make their mark in a viciously competitive world, with no social safety net? French mothers would consider such behaviour preposterous, if not downright mad. The French state provides crèches, free schooling and after-school activities. Other people are paid to get their fingers covered in paint and mess with Play-Doh. The state has its own means of sorting the wheat from the chaff (see here). Being a ‘pushy parent’ is not encouraged in France. There are no school parent–teacher meetings; in general, one only hears from a teacher if one’s child has done something wrong. The French government has even gone so far as to ban homework from 2013, as this is said to place an undue burden on parents, and apparently privileges middle-class children whose parents can give them more help. Homework is to take place at school, after lessons are over for the day, supervised by teachers. All the more reason to relax with a glass of wine in the evening, non?