After reading Rachelle Atkins' Dispatches essay on France and its parenting practices, I so want to move there. While she admits that the daycare situation isn't as specatacular as it's cracked up to be (though still far more affordable than what most Americans pay for childcare), she raves about the kid-inclusive lifestyle.

But that's not the most important thing in the story. To me, the most significant point comes in paragraph five: "For plenty of French women, the notion of going without wine, cheese, cigarettes or caffeine for nine months is as crazy as saying a French man must go through forty years of marriage without taking a mistress."

That's right: Pregnant French women slurp wine and chew on soft cheeses with no shame or guilt! If I may borrow a phrase from the comic genius Yakov Smirnoff (who is not French, but just go with it): "What a country!"

One of the hardest things for me about being pregnant was abstaining from wine for nine months. Like Rachelle, I succumbed a few times and had a glass here or there, mainly because various friends told me they had done the same and their children turned out fine. As soon as I started to show, though, I never had a sip in public for fear that some Posse of Pregnant Women would emerge from the shadows, point their swollen, water-retaining fingers in my face and start shouting, "Bad Mother! Bad Mother!"

Obviously many studies have shown that drinking during pregnancy -- particularly on a regular basis or to excess -- can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome. But having a single glass occasionally during the pregnancy, generally speaking, doesn't seem to be a problem. A number of women, assuming they are in the company of friends with whom they feel "safe" admitting this, seem to agree. Some of my friends even said their doctors told them as much. But it seems like most OBs in the States are afraid to allow even a little latitude on the issue out of fear that some women will hear "It's okay occasionally," then go home and throw back a whole carafe of pinot noir.

While the French may be a bit more liberal than even I am comfortable with -- smoking with a baby bump still strikes me as gross -- it seems like they have a healthier, less judgmental attitude about all of this. Could we Americans benefit from modeling some of that behavior? I say, oui, oui.

Photo: Suraj Mathew on Babble.com