Thank god we don’t live in Sweden. AIBU?

[sw1v]

I was just reading in another thread that in Sweden, you are basically forced to send your babies into day care settings at the age of 1. Apparently 50% of 1 year olds are in full- time nurseries (very long days inc. parents’ commutes) and 95% by the time they are 2! Plus (unlike in the U.K.) there is apparently no minimum ratio for staff to children.

But what if you are a mother who simply doesn’t want to do this (or father)? I personally, would hate this. So how is it acceptable for ‘the state’ to be interfering in people’s personal spheres and family lives by making this ‘the societal norm.’ Is it because they are a high tax society and want more tax? Is this it? Well, it seems like an infringement on personal liberties to me (without wanting to sound too dramatic).

AIBU?

mugandspoon Yep, expat too, (in the UK and of both countries, it seem - don't belong in either) and I do get this. Things can always improve, right? :) I often find Swedes, when returning to Sweden, to be pretty spoilt, taking things for granted that have been so long-fought for - and that people in other countries could only dream of. There's always a tendency to think that the grass is greener - but I still wish for women in the UK to be able to have more genuine choice, and it saddens me that so many don't even know that there are alternatives. I do ultimately believe children are happier when both parents are happy and fulfilled - even if that's within a system with its own flaws. Sweden could do a lot to adress those of course.

@toomuchlaundry

How are school holidays covered, or is that part of parental leave?

They have 'fritids' which is out of school childcare. At my son's school it's the same site but a different building. It's open 6.00-6.00 and children go there if school is closed if they need it. My DS goes twice a week because he loves it and his friends go.

@Stealhsquirrelnutkin your post, which I responded to, is quite clearly about Denmark.

I guess I should take your attempted backtrack as evidence you realise you were wrong.

Not backtracking at all, just pointing out that the sure start programme is not uncontroversial in the areas where it has been rolled out. I've heard parents in the Rhonda valley say that they did not want their children in sure start but were pressurised against their will to allow them to take part.

I am sure the same thing applies in Denmark, the children most likely to benefit from the scheme will have the kind of parents who are most strongly opposed to it. Denmark is a tiny country, if they have been kind enough to welcome immigrants they have the right to ensure that the new citizens integrate and learn to fit in with Danish culture and social mores. It is not racist for a tiny country to permit foreigners to start a new life on the condition that they adapt to the country that has offered them a second chance.

Yes OP I would say we have a very strong tendency towards social cohesion. Do what you want with your life as long as you’re not causing trouble for someone else.

We all have to live together so we all have to live by the social contract so we can keep society good and functioning for everyone.

And I do know that Sweden does have some problems as do all nations. I’m not saying we are perfect.

Someone said Swedish rely on the state too much.. but we have paid for it to be used. Not every Swedish person will use all of what they are entitled to. Not everyone will take out what they put in, but the understanding is that we pay these taxes in order for us all to benefit in some way. It’s there for the citizens to use. Healthcare, child care, university fees etc… Of course we don’t want ppl to abuse it, but I think things like nursery fro children has more advantages for Sweden than disadvantages. It’s not a perfect system, but for what it is I think it works well a lot of the time. I don’t mind paying high taxes because we do get so much out of it and we see where our money is going. You get what you pay for is the saying… so I don’t mind to keep paying to make sure my children will also have a nice clean Sweden and can go to university and have a good life. I hope they will also not begrudge paying taxes because they will want to have Sweden nice for their children as well.

I was expecting this thread to be about racism in Sweden or some of the gang shootings. I was very surprised to see it was about our child care system. 😂

@SparrowNest

Well, that sounds extremely harsh.

Like I said, I live in Germany not Denmark. I feel they go for the carrot rather than the stick here. Certainly since DS has gone to secondary school we've met more kids that live in an origin culture bubble. DH is the class parent leader (don't ask lol, its a German thing) and he gets mails and calls from parents who can barely speak German and are perplexed by whats going on at school. The Danish thing sounds awful but we really need to get on board with our adopted countries. I teach uni and my successful first gen kids have parents that branch out, that try to adopt the new country. We sometimes tell fun stories about funny stuff your foreigner parents think/ thought/ did - and I tell them, I do that too!! But above all, they respect their parents for trying and giving them opportunities. It's an honour really to share in this way.

I was once scolded on here for jokingly saying that your foreign born kid is your mobile translator but that is the reality.

I have adult students, partners in law firms etc. that still read their parents post for them. We have to integrate our kids, we have to if we want them to be successful and happy.

@sw1v

vajingleberry

“But I can’t help feeling I’d kick off over there if the vibe was they wanted me to put my baby in a day centre.

What I’m saying is, if I lived in a society where over 90% of 2 year-olds were in full-time daycare, then I would probably have felt compelled to do the same (even though I didn’t actually want to).

Which is it?
Can't really be both.“

The truth is, I don’t know. If I’d had to put them in full-time, I think that would have made me (personally-speaking) utterly miserable, but then, if everyone’s telling you how wonderful it is for them and it’s generally considered a cultural norm or progress for the good of society, then maybe you convince yourself of that? I don’t know - I’m sure it is good for them in many ways. It just wouldn’t be my instinctive choice, ultimately. Although some Swedish people on here have confirmed it is possible to use daycare very part-time, so perhaps it’s not quite as binary a choice as I thought. Age 2 is still very young though, in my opinion. I had 4 children and they occupied each other without all this. So hard to say because obviously you internalise the norms of the culture where you have your children (or grow up in).

@sw1v

Can you explain what it is that you don't understand about people choosing their hours for sending children to daycare? Why can you not understand that as the parent you have the right to keep your child at home?

The statistics you cite are for the number of children registered for daycare - just because children are registered does not mean they go full time

@DressedUpAtAnIvy

Where did you read this, Xenophobia Today?

Probably the Daily Heil, Express or Torygraph

@catfunk

YABU and very stupid op

Uncalled for. Add something helpful to the discussion rather than an insult.

I was expecting this thread to be about racism in Sweden or some of the gang shootings. I was very surprised to see it was about our child care system.

Given the time of year I thought the moose had been on the sauce again and were behaving so badly they'd made international news. Again.

@FatCatThinCat

I was expecting this thread to be about racism in Sweden or some of the gang shootings. I was very surprised to see it was about our child care system.

Given the time of year I thought the moose had been on the sauce again and were behaving so badly they'd made international news. Again.

TBF that drunken moose totally destroyed that tourist information centre

@Stealhsquirrelnutkin policies, with punishment for non-compliance, that only apply to certain ethnic groups are the definition of racist.

If you think that refugees should be so grateful to be allowed to live somewhere that they should just accept any discriminatory treatment, we have fundamentally incompatible world views.

For what it’s worth, my husband arrived in the UK as a child refugee. His mother was a stay at home parent to four children, none of them spoke much English on arrival. All four siblings attended top universities and have been very successful in their careers. The idea she should have been denied the right to be a SAHM because she was unfortunate enough to have to flee a warzone is abhorrent to me. Rights should be universal.

I'm from Nordics (not Sweden) and if I had a young family, raising it in Nordics would be great. The support that government gives for families is much better: parental leave (which fathers also take!), cheap child care, child benefits etc but also as a society, it is ok for both fathers & mothers to go home at 4pm and have dinner with kids or for either of them to stay home to look after a sick child. The responsibility of having kids is much more equal between parents than for example UK. I also believe this gives kids a good example in life.

Also children have more freedom in my view, they spend more time outdoors and be more independent from a young age. For example kids go to school on their own, even by bike or bus, when they are seven. After children finish school, most of them move out of home and become independent, and you rarely see multi-generational households which is of course different in some other cultures.

@MarshmallowSwede

Yes OP I would say we have a very strong tendency towards social cohesion. Do what you want with your life as long as you’re not causing trouble for someone else.

We all have to live together so we all have to live by the social contract so we can keep society good and functioning for everyone.

And I do know that Sweden does have some problems as do all nations. I’m not saying we are perfect.

Someone said Swedish rely on the state too much.. but we have paid for it to be used. Not every Swedish person will use all of what they are entitled to. Not everyone will take out what they put in, but the understanding is that we pay these taxes in order for us all to benefit in some way. It’s there for the citizens to use. Healthcare, child care, university fees etc… Of course we don’t want ppl to abuse it, but I think things like nursery fro children has more advantages for Sweden than disadvantages. It’s not a perfect system, but for what it is I think it works well a lot of the time. I don’t mind paying high taxes because we do get so much out of it and we see where our money is going. You get what you pay for is the saying… so I don’t mind to keep paying to make sure my children will also have a nice clean Sweden and can go to university and have a good life. I hope they will also not begrudge paying taxes because they will want to have Sweden nice for their children as well.

I was expecting this thread to be about racism in Sweden or some of the gang shootings. I was very surprised to see it was about our child care system. 😂

This is very interesting. I know zero about Sweden and Swedish culture. It sounds quite socialist - is it fairly left wing over there? Really sounds widly different from our approach in the UK.

Can you expand on the racism and shootings? How commonplace is this?

@RickJames I’m not against efforts to help people integrate, far from it! In the UK it seemed particularly egregious that the government was simultaneously demonising people who “refuse to learn English” and cutting funding for language classes.

I used to volunteer with a nice project that combined sewing and crafts with a conversation club. It was mainly used by older women who might not have had so many opportunities to practice their English.

in sweden don't both parents get full paid leave for 12 months?

[quote Winterlights1]@SparrowNest

It’s not that ’I think’ I know, I’ve worked in Sweden for over 20 years (have Danish colleagues). Full time is not necessarily full time, here it is between. 8.45-12.14, 4 days a week..[/quote]
Could you clarify what you mean by full-time being 3.5 hours per day please, and the relevance of it? Looking at the Swedish National Statistics, I cannot find any categorisation by 'full-time' the way we do it in the UK - they seem to do everything per numbers of hours per week?

I've quoted the average number of childcare taken per week above (the council with the highest uptake had an average of 36 hours, the lowest was 24 hours per week, so far beyond your example of 14 hours per week).

@FatCatThinCat You moved from just outside of London to the middle of nowhere in Sweden and you think the two are comparable? You could have moved to quite a few places in the UK and found a large house for the same price as a 2 bed terrace located just outside London or didn't you know?
I moved from Glasgow to Stockholm I can tell you nothing was cheaper in Sweden - miserable bloody place and people in the winter - they bunker down and wait it out - so depressing, done it once never again!

@MarshmallowSwede

Yes OP I would say we have a very strong tendency towards social cohesion. Do what you want with your life as long as you’re not causing trouble for someone else.

We all have to live together so we all have to live by the social contract so we can keep society good and functioning for everyone.

And I do know that Sweden does have some problems as do all nations. I’m not saying we are perfect.

Someone said Swedish rely on the state too much.. but we have paid for it to be used. Not every Swedish person will use all of what they are entitled to. Not everyone will take out what they put in, but the understanding is that we pay these taxes in order for us all to benefit in some way. It’s there for the citizens to use. Healthcare, child care, university fees etc… Of course we don’t want ppl to abuse it, but I think things like nursery fro children has more advantages for Sweden than disadvantages. It’s not a perfect system, but for what it is I think it works well a lot of the time. I don’t mind paying high taxes because we do get so much out of it and we see where our money is going. You get what you pay for is the saying… so I don’t mind to keep paying to make sure my children will also have a nice clean Sweden and can go to university and have a good life. I hope they will also not begrudge paying taxes because they will want to have Sweden nice for their children as well.

I was expecting this thread to be about racism in Sweden or some of the gang shootings. I was very surprised to see it was about our child care system. 😂

Indeed! Your last paragraph - just what I thought But no...the child care system! The envy of the world is the new horror show!

And you totally get what you pay for. Society is for everyone.

Interesting. Not Sweden but i have lived in a country where people rely heavily on nurseries, the cost of nursery (all inclusive) for someone on a low wage was 0.95 euro per day. When I lived in the UK, the cost of nursery was about 40 £ per day and you had to provide a packed lunch and nappies on top.
I think that might be why OP. Lots of mothers simply can't work in the UK because of the cost of nursery.

@ittakes2 18 months

But if you were born and raised in Sweden, you would have a completely different outlook on life so you wouldn't feel horrified at all. Do you not understand that there are many different cultures and that each culture differs from others? And that your own culture isn't the right or best one for everyone?

I am English but I don't share your values and neither do the majority of people I know. The thought of not having a job, generating an income, having personal financial security, putting back in more than I take out, and my DC seeing their mum working in a good job horrifies me. You are being so obtuse about this that you genuinely believe that any mother who doesn't feel the same way as you has been indoctrinated and brainwashed into working and using child care?

@whippetmug

I moved from Glasgow to Stockholm I can tell you nothing was cheaper in Sweden - miserable bloody place and people in the winter - they bunker down and wait it out - so depressing, done it once never again!

Stockholm is a beautiful city, however I would not want to live there either. We go to Scotland at least once a year, absolutely love it. Can’t wait to go back when possible.

I think that TBF there is a strong cultural difference that in the Nordic states there is a strong cultural expectation that people work and pay their way in society. It is pretty socially unacceptable to live on benefits without attempting to work unless there is good reason such as illness or disability etc.

So there is a more coercive element that people are expected to find work, gain qualifications, or get experience if you are receiving public money/ benefits. However this applies regardless of whether you are Swedish or an immigrant. So I guess you can be forced to use daycare if you cannot support yourself. If however you are a family that can survive on a single wage there is no pressure at all

@ArthurTudor, Sweden has been very, very socialist, to the point that I now see some 60-80s policies as more communist than socialist.

The whole foundation of the country was to build a communal society, to educate democratic people and to ensure that everyone had a chance to be part of society. Education was extended massively in the 1960s, one group that benefited a lot was people who had not been given a chance to study when they were young - adult ed was very, very big. Community cohesion was a massive thing. Sweden was an ethnically very homogeneous society: most people did the same thing, wanted the same thing etc. The difference in salaries between best paid and worst paid was much lower than in most other countries.

Since the 90s, things have changed a lot. A very large number of immigrants (I think about 20 % of the current population were born abroad, or have parents who were born abroad) in the 1990s, tied with a financial crisis, led to massive pressure on the systems and councils cut down a lot. A changing education system, where publicly funded free schools opened, led to an increasingly segregated school system. Marketisation and new public management led to a lot of changes.

The difference in income and life opportunities have increased massively. The social democratic party (left wing) has lost a lot of support - they received 50 % of the votes a few times, and 'normally' around 40 %, but over the past few elections they've been on 28-31 %. The right-wing has changed too, with a populist immigrants-out party now being the third biggest party (about 18 % of the votes).

People's circumstances are now very different compared to earlier. This has led to a weaker support for 'community' and resourceful people increasingly stress 'my rights, my choice' in a way that was unheard of 40 years ago. The election next year will be very interesting - views are much more polarised than they 'used to be' and the proposals for how to fix the issues are very different.

One issue is the rise in crime and gang related crime. Over the past year there's been more than one shooting a day on average, mainly between gangs, in deprived areas, mainly consisting of 2nd generation immigrants. It is easy to see that this leads to more segregation.

Can you expand on the racism and shootings? How commonplace is this? Snipper shooting of immigrants in the late 80's early 90's. An annual night of right wing fascist violence. I think it's a nation that doesn't approve of individuality or foreigners and that very much suits some people, I found it suffocating, controlling, cold and unfriendly. It was interesting to speak to other immigrants from especially from Iran - who struggled with the culture - the very cold unfriendly suspicious nature of it, they grew used to not having conversations with random people they encountered in Sweden - they kept that for their holidays - the Chinese people I met didn't seem that bothered. I have often been told that the culture I encountered was very much Stockholm - but the Swedes I knew weren't from Stockholm - they were from all over and it was not just my opinion, it was pretty much the opinion of every Erasmus Student we knew - we were made to feel very unwelcome.