Free French Toast by Harriet Welty Rochefort Page B

effort to zip up my mouth at formal French dinner parties so as not to come on as being too aggressive. A
definite
cultural gap.
    A terrible thing did happen one night, though. At a dinner party given by a Frenchman and his American wife, I found myself with several very entertaining American women who were there with their French husbands. Even before, and certainly after, several drinks, we American women got together and started loudly laughing and having a good time. The Frenchmen were excluded. We were having such a fun, boisterous time that we had
forgotten
them. And they, totally unused to such behavior, didn’t really know what to do. It was very impolite.
    There are a lot of generalizations you can make about the French and most of them probably would not stand up half the time, but I can safely say that never would you see that kind of conduct from a group of Frenchwomen, especially Parisian women. First of all, they don’t enjoy one another’s company that much. That sounds nasty, but what I mean is that since the French are not only not taught to smile but think that the generalized smile is something reserved for dolts, you can’t really tell whether they are having the time of their lives or are bored out of their minds. Second, French women bond in a quieter, more personal way. Third, they never drink too much and hence don’t let go. To their everlasting credit, one might be tempted to say.
    So we American women present that night were very ashamed and vowed to toe the line at future social occasions.
    Male-female relationships in France seem to be decidedly different from the way they are in the States. If, by some quirk of fate, you find yourself in a Franco-American marriage, you get the fun of observing all of these considerable cultural gaps firsthand—and don’t let anyone tell you there aren’t any (or many).
    All of these cultural gaps are exacerbated in an inter-cultural marriage. Marriage is hard enough as it is, and intercultural marriages can be even harder because of incomprehension due to cultural differences. “I thinkthat all the differences in traditional marriages are even harder in intercultural marriages,” family counselor Jill Bourdais, an American who has lived in Paris with her French husband for over twenty years, told me. She offered in-laws as an example of cultural differences. When Americans marry, she says, there is the shared assumption that the in-laws might be difficult, and that you don’t necessarily have to see them. “The expectation here is that you have to go to your mother-in-law’s house once a week rain or shine, and this comes as a shock to the American partner. And once you get there, you often find that you are the child and that the mother-in-law runs the show for everyone.”
    One American who goes to the south of France regularly to visit her in-laws complained that the mother-in-law wouldn’t let anyone, not her or her children, out of the house when it was too hot. “So there we are, prisoners inside the house, because she has proclaimed that that’s the way it’s going to be.” I must admit that the first time I heard my late father-in-law calling for the children (
les enfants
), I thought he was addressing my two young sons.
Mais non!
He was addressing me and my husband.
We
were the children.
    Child raising can be another major area of conflict for Franco-American couples. Confides one friend who is still happily married: “I think our biggest conflict was over bringing up children. The French have this Catholic attitude of original sin in which they see the child asbeing born bad and needing to be straightened up. My husband—but this is his character and perhaps not because he is French—is quick to criticize and slow to praise.” She laughs: “It’s not that he’s mean, but he was brought up that way himself.” And she continues: “I was afraid