In their attempt to cope with the daunting problems of poverty and pregnancy, poor women in nineteenth-century France struggled with their environment and in some respects helped shape it. Rachel Fuchs reveals who these women were and how they survived. With dramatic detail, and drawing on actual hospital records and court testimonies, Fuchs portrays poor women's childbirth experiences, their use of charity and welfare, and their recourse to abortion and infanticide as desperate alternatives to motherhood. Fuchs also provides a comprehensive description of philanthropic and welfare institutions, and outlines the relationship between the developing welfare state and official conceptions of womanhood. She traces the evolution of a new morality among policymakers in which secular views, medical hygiene, and a new focus on the protection of children replaced religious morality as a driving force in policy formation. Combining social, intellectual, and medical history, this study of poor mothers illuminates both class and gender relations in Paris and brings to light the connection between social policy and the way ordinary women lived their lives. Fuchs's book enriches contemporary debates about maternity leave, abortion rights, and national health care initiatives. Book jacket.

Is it possible to maintain chic as a single-mom-to-be in a city where it's all supposed to be effortless and breastfeeding is a horreur? Does one live by the Parisienne's pregnancy plan of smoking, drinking, and cheese-eating avec vin blanc, but jamais jamais gain more than six kilos? And how to handle a pickup attempt by a married man in the baby department of Bon Marché when you're eight months along? After all, American girls do things differently: Lamaze class and baby showers, sensible prenatal care and...family to watch you proudly grow more and more pregnant. Paris is full of delights for a new mom: the Luxembourg Gardens, baby boutiques too precious to be passed by, a petit brioche for a teething tot. But home exerts a powerful pull. Should your child grow up skipping by the Seine or scampering up a tree house? Should it be "Mommy" or "Maman"? And can a tall blonde with a taste for Veuve Cliquot and Vuitton ever make it in the land of mom jeans and Happy Meals? Paris, Baby! is novelist Kirsten Lobe's warm, funny memoir about Paris, Frenchmen, friendship, babies, and making it on one's own.

Book Includes: Chapters in English and French for building reading skills. 150 practice exercises with translations and answers. 350 vocabulary words. Appendix includes medical terminologies for illnesses, symptoms, and anatomy. Emergency contact page to tear out of book to place near a phone. Table of contents: Pregnancy Declaration, Gynecologist or Midwife, Medical Schedule, First Prenatal Appointment, Ultrasounds, Maternity Leave, Complementary Health Insurance, Birthing Locations, Birth Preparation Classes, Labor, Delivery, Hospital Stay, and Appendix. Reviews "I'm so glad to have read your book. I needed it to make my life easier when conducting classes in English for patients who do not understand French, or whose husbands are poor translators. I am delighted to recommend your book to these women, for better understanding." - Catherine Gervaise, Sage-Femme Libérale, Aix en Provence "Simple, yet thorough, informative and instructive, French Mamma's Pregnant in France by Carrieanne Le Bras is written in both French and English. If you are a foreigner having a baby in France, this book is for you!" - Maria Babin from the Busy as a Bee in Paris blog

“I told Helen my story and she went home and cried.” So begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns’s beguiling novel is far from tragic, despite the harrowing ordeals its heroine endures. Sophia is twenty-one and naïve when she marries fellow artist Charles. She seems hardly fonder of her husband than she is of her pet newt; she can’t keep house (everything she cooks tastes of soap); and she mistakes morning sickness for the aftereffects of a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and the money Sophia makes from the occasional modeling gig doesn’t make up for her husband’s indifference to paying the rent. Predictably, the marriage falters; not so predictably, Sophia’s artlessness will be the very thing that turns her life around.

Soon to be a streaming series ● In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy. When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man. In A Great Improvisation, Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.

This is a major new history of the dramatic and enduring changes in the daily lives of poor European women and men in the nineteenth century. Rachel G. Fuchs conveys the extraordinary difficulties facing the destitute from England to Russia, paying particular attention to the texture of women's everyday lives. She shows their strength as they attempted to structure a life and set of relationships within a social order, culture, community, and the law. Within a climate of calamities, the poor relied on their own resourcefulness and community connections where the boundaries between the private and public were indistinguishable, and on a system of exchange and reciprocity to help them fashion their culture of expediencies. This accessible synthesis introduces readers to conflicting interpretations of major historic developments and evaluates those interpretations. It will be essential reading for students of women's and gender studies, urban history and social and family history.

À la carte wisdom from the international bestseller Bringing up Bébé In BRINGING UP BÉBÉ, journalist and mother Pamela Druckerman investigated a society of good sleepers, gourmet eaters, and mostly calm parents. She set out to learn how the French achieve all this, while telling the story of her own young family in Paris. BÉBÉ DAY BY DAY distills the lessons of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ into an easy-to-read guide for parents and caregivers. How do you teach your child patience? How do you get him to like broccoli? How do you encourage your baby to sleep through the night? How can you have a child and still have a life? Alongside these time-tested lessons of French parenting are favorite recipes straight from the menus of the Parisian crèche and winsome drawings by acclaimed French illustrator Margaux Motin. Witty, pithy and brimming with common sense, BÉBÉ DAY BY DAY offers a mix of practical tips and guiding principles, to help parents find their own way.