It's quite true ( and the fact that this condition is little known to french people, meaning many child having it probably go undiagnosed), and you also have to take the educationnal system into account, which follows the same trend : child in school are much less encouraged to express personnal opinions and work on personnal projects.

To sum up i would say it really is a combination of three things : - different school of psychology ( more focused on diagnosing psychoanalytics backgrounds seeing as the "real root" causes rather than neurobiological ones) - different educationnal / parenting culture providing a more "framed" environment ( at the expense of personnal initiative development) - general public ignorance for this condition ( maybe a consequence of the previous two)

Ps : french, nephews and nieces, personnal interest in psychology.