A review by liralen
Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children by Sara Zaske

3.0

I’m not a parent, nor likely to be one anytime soon, but I’m always curious about contemporary German memoir (much easier to find WWII memoirs, which are less relevant to my life…). This managed to answer a number of questions that had been floating around in the back of my mind: in particular, why, when I lived in Prenzlauer Berg, did I see so many tiny wee children biking down the pavement with nary a parent in sight? (I’m in a different Kiez at the moment and don’t see as many unaccompanied tinies, but it always made me want to ask Wo sind deine Eltern?) But it’s intentional, as it turns out: as Zaske explains it, while in American culture there’s a heavy emphasis on parental attachment, in German culture there’s more of an it-takes-a-village mentality (i.e., children should have numerous adult role models from a young age, not just family) and also more of an intentional, calculated fostering of independence from a very young age.

This is part research and part memoir, and I think I would have preferred it to skew a bit further in one direction or the other—but even for the non-parentally-inclined, it’s a really engaging read, skating across topics from the aforementioned independence to schooling differences (the ever-present Kita!) to sex ed. Definitely one to pique interest in cultural differences.