An article on French child-rearing, from an Anglo-Saxon point-of-view.

“I will never forget my husband’s horror when some visiting Upper-West-Siders I barely knew arrived at one of our dinner parties with their uninvited nine-year-old son.

That would have been fine; except that Seth was one of these precocious Manhattan kids who had to sit at the table with adults. He completely took over the evening, interrupting adults’ conversations, and - to the delight of his besotted parents - performed a 10-minute hip-hop routine between courses.

In France, that would simply never have happened. The child would have been paraded out to say bonsoir, peck cheeks, and then scurry back to his or her room to read or study.

‘Children in France are seen, but not heard,’ says one American friend, Katherine, who is a mother of two. “Except on the playground, where the parents don’t get involved and then it becomes Lord of the Flies.’”

“Along with the heads of Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette, another casualty of the French Revolution was tea.

Yes, really. It’s a little known fact, but after its introduction to Europe in the 17th century tea was tremendously popular in France. It first arrived in Paris in 1636 (22 years before it appeared in England!) and quickly became popular among the aristocracy. Cardinal Mazarin, the most powerful man in France under Louis XIV (great-great-great grandfather of the unfortunate Louis XVI), took tea regularly. Actually, he started drinking it because he thought it would help his gout, but it’s a safe bet he continued because he enjoyed the taste! “