When you're further along in your career, you probably have more money and more means; you have to stop yourself from giving your child too much. Whereas, if you're in twenties, you might just get by.
Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.
In my 40s, I expect to finally reap the average-looking girl's revenge. I've entered the stage of life where you don't need to be beautiful; simply by being well-preserved and not obese, I would now pass for pretty.
If you want to know how old you look, just walk into a French cafe. It's like a public referendum on your face.
Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk.
The question on my husband's birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing?
French children seem to be able to play by themselves in a way.
I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as a far-off decade of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done. But for older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to.
This idea - that the only way to mend the relationship post-affair is through therapy - is unique to the American script.
A lot of French comedy is satire.
Every time I pass a cafe, I imagine it being stormed by men with Kalashnikovs.
A lot of French comedy is satire.
Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide.
Where Americans might coo over a child's most inane remark to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening.
The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part.
French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.
When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump?
Optimism - even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty - has long been an American hallmark.
America's parenting customs can shock foreigners.
Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews.