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?

@Bingbangboo, I entirely agree with you about too-early specialisation in the education system. I’m not from the UK, and my home education system is more like the IB. You have to take a foreign language, a science, maths and English till final school exams at the age of 17 or 18, and you take a minimum of seven subjects for those exams.

Fairly or not, I do link it to the low level of general knowledge so often demonstrated on here. Often followed by ‘Oh, we didn’t do that at school’.

Come to Cornwall. It's obligatory to greet everyone here and have a little chat with the shop clerk/waiter/etc.

Except in the height of summer where we exchange eye rolls with fellow locals instead when we see entitled rude tourists doing their thing 😂

When you say all muck in, is that really all, or all the women?
A lot of time, elderly relatives need full time care, which is not feasible for someone to give up work to care for them, not to mention medical needs or incontinence which may well need 2 people to deal with. I dont think not having space for an elderly relative is usually the barrier...

I don't understand it either. I thought trying to make left handed people use their right hand was a Victorian thing. Why would you not use your dominant hand to cut your food?

I'm right handed and if I used my left hand to cut meat the person sitting next to me would be covered in food.

I wear my watch on my right hand which lots of people think is weird (im right handed)

Or wearing shoes indoors. I find it disgusting that the shoes you wear outside where the soles are covered in filth and then worn around in your own home.

It absolutely will be a problem across the western world. We just don’t see their news bulletins, or read their papers, so we mostly don’t know what’s going on.

Religion.

Litter. In the streets, along the motorways, on beaches, country lanes.

The fact that it's always there, that some people don't even seem to notice it. The bins go out, the bin men drop stuff and don't pick it up. People take their bins in and don't pick it up. There it stays. People drop whole bag fulls of McDonald's waste out of car windows and throw cider cans in hedges.

Weddings..it's such a big deal to alot of people. They say they wait their whole lives for this day and people cry. In reality it's just made up. If you get "married" put on a white dress, have someone read an oath to you, witnessed and Put a ring on and boom together forever. Its something made up by society and actually means nothing apart from any benefits you may receive for being married by the government who also made them rules up.

Agreed, and a point ignored by many.

No one is being made to atone for the acts of those who lived over 100 years ago, but it’s recognising that those acts caused much of the wealth divide we now see around the world.

Similar to the slave trade - putting aside colonisation, I can’t comment on how differently many of the countries in Africa would have developed differently if they hadn’t lost their healthiest and strongest, but the wealth gap that is prevalent along racial lines in the US is directly linked to the slave trade, and ignoring because it’s something that happened a long time ago means it just continues.

I walk barefoot in the house and garden in summer but I wouldn't outside the house or garden. In summer the pavements are too hot. The rest of the year it is too cold, and our pavements are filthy. Do you not have any dogs in your neighbourhood?

Driving barefoot is not recommended from a safety aspect.

I have teens, one still at school, typical comprehensive in the south east and there isn't that kind of mocking anymore, in fact, the pressure felt is to be bright but also really 'cool'. I was at school in the 90s and I think yes, it was the case that being clever was mocked and 'nerdy' but I did go to a a large London Comp so I'm not sure if that was just the culture.

Amsterdam, December 2024

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy81qvn7gjo

Getting drunk. I like a nice glass of wine or champagne but I’m baffled by people who drink for the purpose of getting drunk. I am embarrassed by my countrymen abroad for this reason.

Smacking Children, I like to think most people wouldn’t but I find it gross that it’s still lawful to smack a child in the UK.

I thought konfirmation was just an excuse for a party and skipping school the next day? And to be fair a lot of teens don't do it anymore, or at least not the dressing up and going to church bit. None of my colleagues kids did it.

Well actually, i am right handed, but have always used my left hand to cut food.

My dad was exactly the same, so i may have copied him. But i think for me it made less sense to need to swap my fork into my left hand when i need to use a knife.

When we drive in the UK we also use our left hand to change gear. So again, i don’t see the problem with being able to use both hands for different things 😂

Well it is against the law in Scotland & Wales; not sure about NI. So not the UK.

I disagree, I did pretty well at GCSE but shined at A levels when I could specialise, my DC are the same demonstrated by the fact that my eldest achieved AAA in his A levels and my youngest has a talent beyond her years for Art and Design and is looking forward to homing in in that area of study. DH was the same and is a talented Architect. Anecdotally, for our family, the specialism is/was a necessity to focus on the detail, to develop deep expertise. In our case, spreading yourself too thin just leads to average outcomes.

Yes, I suppose we share common roots with many of the population there. Perhaps it's cultural influences, but George Orwell was writing about it in the 1930s so it's been going on for a long time.

A star x 2 that should read not three As.

Me too. My husband has always thought that I was probably naturally left handed. One of our children and our grandchild is.

Oh, and I wouldn't say anybody I know has a low level of general knowledge as we all had similar upbringings with books to read, current affairs and culture discussed and well read parents. I don't think MN is representative of the general knowledge of UK citizens.

Agreed it's abusive and should be illegal everywhere, I am aware it's illegal in some parts of the UK but I can't understand the resistance to making it illegal in England as well.

I was always against hitting children (what a crazy stance to take eh?), but have become even more against it since having children and just seeing how small and helpless they are it seems completely disgusting and I simply can't understand how someone could not only actually lay their hands on a child but defend it.