Angry French mother tells her story

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 17

Angry French mother tells her story

From

JOAN HARRISON

in Paris

An impassioned plea for adult sons to leave home has become a surprise best-seller in France. “Moi Ta Mere” by Christiane Collange has rocketed up the list in the last few weeks because it deals with an area of conflict in French family life about which parents are becoming increasingly rebellious. It also — which is apparently good for sales — sees the problem exclusively and almost vindictively from the parents’ side. The French young cling to mama and papa right on into their late 20s. whether the excuse is unemployment or, in middle-class households, studies that go on and on, grown-up children are increasingly reluctant to face the prospect of starting out on their own. Christiane Collange has four home-loving sons aged between 20

and 30. In her book she turns on them and savages their notion that parents are “lifelong Father Christmasses.” Her sons read the book before it appeared. As one would expect they do not think much of it, but they have helped launch it by posing in a grinning bunch round their mother to suggest that there are no hard feelings. Perhaps they hope that their co-operation will win them another year or two under the family roof. Some reviews have complained about "shameless washing of domestic linen in public.” Other critics admit that the book reveals a real social problem. Mrs Collange points out that a report by the French National Institute of Demographic Study shows that three-quarters of the

single men and women in France between the ages of 18 and 24 live with their parents. According to the same study group only 6 per cent of the young deliberately leave home because they do not get on with their parents. “The problem,” says Mrs Collange, “is that this cohabitation is based on a profound misunderstanding. You expect everything from papa and mama without realising that the point has long ago been reached when you should have been standing on your own feet.”

Between December, 1983, and January, 1984, “Humanite Di-

manche,” the Sunday version of the Communist Party’s official newspaper, ordered a poll for 15 to 24-year-olds. As far as the questions were concerned it was easy to see that the Communist Party would like to have shown that there was a dissatisfaction or uneasiness among the young against their parents. The findings proved the exact opposite. Eighty per cent of the youngsters questioned did not think there was anything outdated about family life; 81 per cent said that they could count on their parents if they had a problem; and 75 per cent admitted that home sweet home

was the place where one was best off.

“Not very revolutionary, are they, les petitsl" says Mrs Collange. It is when she gets down to what is wrong with her own sons that her remarks come out like a scream — and it is all pretty damning stuff. She explains that husbands in France have long since stopped treating women like housekeepers and that a large percentage in all walks of life share the chores, the cooking, and the shopping, and do not expect to be waited on. “It’s our sons who are now the machos,” she says. “But as girls of their age are equally selfish, and as none of them seem to ever want to get married, it is mother who is still taking all the

Christiane Collange traces the change in the present parent-child relationship to the evolution in sexual behaviour. Parental feeling was now no longer repressive, but liberal, so that one of the strongest reasons for emancipation that the young of the preceding generation had, the fight for sexual freedom, has now disappeared.

Even most conservative families have become integrated into the new attitude, she says. “You now have the right to dispose of your body as you wish. We were happy to fight so that you could have this freedom but we haven’t yet found the right words to talk about this new moral code. Recycling Christian tradition in an era of sexual revolution — not an easy thing to do.”