What things do you find odd that are considered normal in your society/culture?

[BrucesBarAndGrill]

This is inspired by a conversation I was having earlier that I found interesting.

The thing that sparked the conversation was that I said I thought it was odd how adults are expected to share beds and on the flip side of that how parents who co-sleep with their children are seen as doing something odd or different to the accepted norm. I can't understand why it's seen as normal to put a baby/small child to bed on their own in a different room while adults, who don't have the same need of protection and care, share a bed in a different room.

I assume that other people must think about things like this aswell and I was wondering what social/cultural norms felt strange to you?

Supermarkets overflowing with Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and.New Year's tat. Just irritating.

It’s probably the same in all cultures so I am missing the point of the thread but I don’t understand why we pay those who care for our most vulnerable, our most precious humans - the young, the old, the disabled, a lowly minimum wage per hour.
We pay paramedics, firefighters and nurses not huge amounts.
Yet those who work in marketing, advertising, football players and other big sports stars, film and tv stars, hedge fund managers etc get paid large (sometimes astronomical) amounts.
It’s utterly daft.
And sad.

Two Christmas ones. Firstly that from November onwards shops and radio stations largely play about the same 20 Christmas songs that they've been playing since the 1980s. Very few 'new' Christmas songs ever break in to the line up. Will it ever change? Secondly, the concept of a 'tinsel and turkey' weekend in hotels in places like Eastbourne. Do any other countries have the concept of pretending its Christmas for the weekend a few months before the actual event?

Also, the idea that children aged 14 have to pick their options in schools which largely dictates what A-levels, further education and job options will follow. These are children who have never worked, or even applied for a job in the most part, but yet once they are on a certain track with their subject choices it can be very difficult or expensive to change their minds. We don't let 14 years old get permanent tattoos, yet the fact they can make literal life changing decisions is normalised.

I don't think I know anyone who works who wears similar clothes as many secondary school students. Many people I know wear a polo shirt and sweatshirt for work and not a blazer

Blowing out candles on a birthday cake and then everyone eating it.

If I was at a friends for dinner and they walked into the room blowing all over my food and then served it to me I wouldn’t eat it so why do we find it acceptable with cake. Especially when little kits are doing it repeatedly and spitting all over it.

And, unfortuately, by several mumsnetters who post about their abusive partners - "he's a great dad when he isn't gaming all night/drinking/smoking weed/snorting cocaine/beating me up" etc

Hopefully, the law is going to change after Claire Throssell and Marie Tidball met with Keir Starmer recently.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz91ng13gqko

This!

I find it very strange that children can end up with advanced degrees, not having taken a history class after age 13 or 14, for instance. I also find it odd that no kind of balance comes into education after age 16.

I also don't understand the lack of value British society sees in 'classical' music.

I'm in the UK and am surprised how embedded drinking has become. Some people are shocked if you don't drink. Some even seem to see it as a personal sleight.

The drinking culture and how people who don’t drink are seen as odd, or puritan, or dull.

How much importance people seem to place on school uniforms - including someone’s hair colour and how many piercings they have in their ears.

Football and football culture in general.

How much importance is put on class and background, and how so many people are happy to sneer at anyone with a less fortunate upbringing.

Primary schools here in Ireland with 2 finishing times. I will never get this. So inconvenient for parents with kids in different classes. Having to go home briefly and then load the smaller one up again maybe with a baby or toddler in tow too. Or sit in the car for an hour waiting. It’s so stupid. Why can’t they just split the difference and everyone finishes at 2.30? Thankfully this phase of my life is over but I really think it’s something that needs changing.

I 100% agree with you on this! I remember during covid commenting on how all the people doing... i can't remember the official name they used now, but the "high risk" jobs who had to work all through lock down were mostly jobs where you didn't get paid enough to put yourself at risk. Suddenly the most important people weren't the CEOs with their massive paychecks, but the minimum wage workers in shops, nurses, bin collectors etc. It really showed who really keeps things running

Having access to a free of charge, room temperature, sterile, nutritionally tailored, immune system priming, oxytocin giving, melatonin having substance then refusing to use it.

Finding breastfeeding a baby this substance throughout childhood strange and ungodly, whilst regularly purchasing the lactation of a different species into adulthood.

Definitely a thing in the USA too probably other countries as well

It's just capitalism. The system doesn't care about people. It cares about profit. It's all extremely simple and not confusing at all when you realise the priority.

Those top paying jobs earn lots because they generate lots. What profit does caring for vulnerable people bring?

None. That's why it's low paid in a capitalist system.

Furthermore, it all rests on the poor. Money is created from debt. So it's people taking out debt who are ensuring the continuation of our money system and preventing a total economic crash.

They're incredibly valuable to the system and we need lots and lots of them and for them to breed lots and lots too.

You couldn’t be more wrong about football ‘hooliganism’. Pretty much every country in Europe and South America has football-related violence, and in a lot of countries it’s much worse than the UK, especially within the grounds themselves.

Can you explain this a bit more? Do you mean confirmation as in the church service?

Mine is that it is socially acceptable for a man (or woman but that's rarer) to walk out on his children and let the state support them.

@CinnamonCinnabar

Sure, no one alive today personally ran the British Empire - but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. The legacies are still here: borders that fuel conflicts, wealth taken to build British institutions, and knowledge systems that sidelined non-European voices. That’s why universities talk about “decolonisation” - not to make people feel guilty, but to deal with the fact that the empire shaped the world we live in now.

And the Viking comparison doesn’t really work. Their raids were a thousand years ago; Britain’s empire only ended in living memory. Lots of people today had parents or grandparents who were directly colonised. That makes it a very different conversation.

It’s not about pretending to be sad or ignoring other conflicts - it’s about recognising that history isn’t just “over” if its consequences are still shaping the present.

Very good point @DaisyChain505

I agree I grew up with an alcoholic father, I don’t drink. I used to drink but it’s frustrating how acceptable alcohol is, I genuinely can’t be bothered.

Yes. But it's more like a mini wedding: Clothes, hair, makeup, huge party, so many gifts, time off school for "blue Monday" where they all go shopping with the money they got.

Russians?

I’m glad I don’t live wherever this is prevalent!
I take it nobody says Mind your own business?

I totally agree and I think this sort of overreach actually fuels racisism.

Yes, yes, and yes again.

Exactly. I don’t understand why people consider me eating with my knife in my left hand ‘bad manners’. I don’t get how it’s any different to someone writing left handed.