A brilliant new study—heralded around the world—finds that siblings share a brain structure that makes it hard for them to delay gratification, which leads them to become addicted. The study's authors, Science (the journal), Nora Volkow, and Time's addiction expert Maia Szalavitz all explain how this shows that people's brains—prior to any environmental influences—predetermines their addiction-proneness. (Never mind that only one of each of the sibling pairs in the study with the same brain-function deficiency was addicted.)
So, let's see – impulsiveness –> addiction. I wonder – can anything else impact people's ability to delay gratification?
The reason I ask is that some people have been writing about the differences between French and American child-rearing styles. Here's what they have been saying:
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."
This was written by Susannah Meadows in her New York Times review of Pamela Druckerman's book, "Bringing Up Bébé." The funny thing is that Meadows—like Druckerman an American who was exposed to France but who really prefers America—ruefully agrees with Druckerman's basic points about American child-rearing, even as she criticizes Druckerman for making them (her ambivalence is evident in her quoted passage).
Druckerman summarizes her parenting observations and experiences in her article, "Why French Parents Are Superior" in Slate:
After a few more harrowing restaurant visits, I started noticing that the French families around us didn't look like they were sharing our mealtime agony. Weirdly, they looked like they were on vacation. French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables. . . .
Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves. . . .
Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are-by design-toddling around by themselves.
The result of all of this upbringing:
One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)
One Saturday I visited Delphine Porcher, a pretty labor lawyer in her mid-30s who lives with her family in the suburbs east of Paris. When I arrived, her husband was working on his laptop in the living room, while 1-year-old Aubane napped nearby. Pauline, their 3-year-old, was sitting at the kitchen table, completely absorbed in the task of plopping cupcake batter into little wrappers. She somehow resisted the temptation to eat the batter.
Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family's daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification. Delphine said that she sometimes bought Pauline candy. (Bonbons are on display in most bakeries.) But Pauline wasn't allowed to eat the candy until that day's snack, even if it meant waiting many hours.
Now, where have I heard about delaying gratification? – I know, it was in the Science research about who becomes addicted! But, wait a second, if anyone believed that, Americans—young and old— would be fatter than French people, would drink coffee more compulsively, and would more likely be alcoholic than Southern Europeans.
Ridiculous! (as I point out in my PT post, End Alcoholism -- Bomb Spain!") As any reader of Science, Time Healthland, and Nora Volkow recognizes, addiction stems strictly from—well—brain stems!
Those French are so stupid – they just don't understand good science.