By Anne Swardson

The country that reluctantly accepted one of the strictest set of coronavirus lockdown rules in the Western world now is nervous about living without them.

France begins phasing out its 49-day “confinement” Monday and details of the new regime have been trickling out all week. Many involve new curbs: People can only travel 100 kilometers from home, for instance, without an approved excuse. There will be new quarantine restrictions on arriving foreigners, though no one can figure out exactly what they are.

But Phase 2 also grants more freedoms. Residents of France will be able to go out when and where they wish, rather than having to carry a certificate that shows which of the allowed type of outing they are engaged in. Jogging can be done anywhere, rather than within 1 kilometer from home. And, most importantly, mayors are arbiters of whether their local schools can reopen, and parents are allowed to choose whether to send their children. The government wants the youngest to start Monday.

Restarting school was always going to be controversial. Teachers say they can’t be sure they will be protected, even under the strict distancing and hygiene measures prescribed. More than 300 mayors in the region that includes Paris asked over the weekend for a postponement of the reopening because they couldn’t guarantee that proper school safety measures will be in place.

Interestingly, they also complained that the government had left it up to them to manage the reopening. And parents are objecting to the fact that they too get to decide on sending their kids to class. There is a “general climate of worry,” the mayor of Saint-Remy L’Honoré, southwest of Paris, told President Emmanuel Macron in a videoconference the other day. Parents are viewing the voluntary nature of the return “as if someone had turned the responsibility back to them.”

Well, yes. Where I come from, that would be considered a good thing, though even in the U.S. not an easy decision. I can’t imagine American parents would prefer the choice be made for them.

Macron, for his part, responded that “We are a nation of free beings and everyone has to take responsibility.” He’s also said that school needs to reopen in part because lower-income children often don’t have access to wifi or computers, which permit online learning.

`Unsure and Confused’

My friend Marc, a TV writer, summed the contradiction this way in a Facebook post (loosely translated, with his permission): “I see families who are unsure or confused about the decisions they will have to make in a few days and yet who complain about the government — which also has to rely on divergent expert opinions, questions about their motives and lobbying, before making a choice for 60 million people.”

Writer John Lichfield made a similar point in a column for The Local France, pointing not just to parents and teachers but to transport operators and the political opposition (the French Senate voted a symbolic rejection of the plan this week) as complaining too much and helping too little. “Teamwork does not come naturally in France. Nor national unity,” he wrote.

While the lockdown has generated resentment in the poorer suburbs and parts of big cities (where arrests and police brutality have been disproportionate and the rules often unenforced), it is widely accepted elsewhere. The Local asked its readers whether there was resentment against confinement in parts of the country where coronavirus hadn’t hit hard, of which there are many. This map from the health ministry shows active cases combined with pressure on intensive-care units in hospitals.

The response was no. Readers in cities in the west and south, such as Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse, said residents there had largely followed the rules. No Lansings, Austins, Madisons or even Londons in France.

Of course, residents here don’t always show their opposition by demonstrating. Instead, they silently and invisibly protest. User data from Apple and Google furnished to the government showed people were leaving home more and going farther at the end of April compared to earlier in the month, Le Parisien reported. The information was scrubbed to keep identities private, but it clearly showed more visits to shops and work.

It’s one thing to quietly bend a rule. It’s another to have no rule and be forced to make up your own mind.