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?

I can imagine 50/50 is more common with the Swedish set up

MarshaBradyo

I can imagine 50/50 is more common with the Swedish set up

It is. We had a parents meeting yesterday, and 80% were dads. They are often the ones that texts during the day asking if their little one is ok..

Also, I don’t know any men who would genuinely do ‘50/50’ if given the opportunity, so so find it hard to believe that women aren’t still doing most of the juggling in reality.

OP. Honestly, you could not be more wrong. It’s not really even a thing that would normally be discussed here, it is just the way it is. Believe it or not.

@sw1v

YellowHat - I’m sorry your ex was crap, but that’s not really what this debate is about.

Maybe I’m looking at all this too much through the lens if someone who has 4 children and a husband for whom the shared maternal / paternal leave thing would simply not have been viable. I don’t know many men for whom it would have been viable, to be honest, so that’s no doubt clouding my perspective. When you have 4 young children and a husband who is away a lot, you do what you need to do and so if there was a societal expectation that all these children should be in daycare so you can also be doing a job in those hours, I can’t see how that would have made life less stressful. It just would have added to my mental load and I would have been running round like a headless chicken even more! Life gets more structured when they start school anyway and that happens soon enough. I don’t know if I could have coped with 4 0-6 year-olds (practically on my own) with a job on top. Well, I would have had to cope at the end of the day, but it’s not something I would have chosen, put it that way. It’s different with one or two children I guess and a husband who is more flexible.

I think a lot is differences in attitude to parenting. Most men that I know in Sweden expect to play an active role in parenting. The drop-offs/pick-ups and afterschool activities were never an issue as I never did more than 50% of them.

I sat on a Departmental governing board of a major Swedish University and we had to schedule out meetings around the fact that 4 of the men were responsible for nursery pick-ups between 2 and 3pm. Nobody batted an eyelid because active parenting by dads is considered normal,

DH earned over 10x more than my student grant/loan - but he never considered not taking parental leave to spend time with his kids. Another friend had a husband that was a pilot and obviously was away a lot of the time - but still took parental leave

When my children were little, my DH once actually cancelled a work trip to Singapore because the children were sick and I was the one who had stayed at home the last few times. He is definitely the much much higher earner, but I had a new job at a nursery and he thought it was just as important. It’s about attitudes.

(and yes, he still got 80% pay)

Is 80% pay capped?

Someone said it was from state so even the highest earners?

Pay can be extraordinary in U.K. so maybe that makes me second take more

@Hemskis

I'm Swedish and this is not true. Childcare is good quality and subsidied by the government to enable you to work. If you are unemployed you are entitled to a certain number of hours. Nursery hours are restricted to your work hours so you can't pay extra to have some free time. Childcare staff are well educated. Parental leave is excellent and often shared by both parents and children generally don't attend nursery when younger than a year.

You can be a stay at home mum if you like, noone will stop you, but it's not a common choice.

It's a far superior situation to here in terms of greater equality and support for parents who want or need to work but also have proper parental leave

@Winterlights1

When my children were little, my DH once actually cancelled a work trip to Singapore because the children were sick and I was the one who had stayed at home the last few times. He is definitely the much much higher earner, but I had a new job at a nursery and he thought it was just as important. It’s about attitudes.

Agreed

@MarshaBradyo he worked for a private company and they go by the rules. But, being a high earner it’s obviously a bigger loss of income still compared to if your partner earns less..

DH and I earn equal amounts, both work FT and share equally school drop offs/pick ups and housework.

This was what I anticipated would be the norm in a friendship group of well educated women with professional jobs but it turned out as DC came along most of these women had little interest in working full time, some at all and little interest in being equals in raising their children with their DH.

Mothers being the primary care giver is so deeply ingrained in our society that both men and women believe this is best. Maybe it is? It certainly has been throughout history when there were no other options really. We live in a progressive society where women claim to want equality. Do we really though? Or would many of us love to go back to the 50s and just focus on raising our DC and keeping our men happy?

Working women= educated and professional.
SAHM= 1950's housewives raising kids and keeping their man happy.
Oh, that old chestnut 👍

Toottootdrive women being the primary caregiver hasn't always meant women not working at all though - that is a very recent construct. Go back to the 19th century and you're in the era of child labour, women dragging their children along to their very low paid work, men still not doing childcare for the most part because they were off doing the kind of super physical jobs that just weren't compatible with bringing children along.

Go back further and the picture is much the same - women working in the field with their children alongside, babies strapped to their back, men working too. The woman staying at home doing nothing but housework and childcare is not a long-standing tradition at all.

As for going back to the 50s and keeping our men happy - 🤮. Far better to focus on creating a society where men can get properly good at being parents.

@Thecatsbutler

You can be a well educated, professional SAHM. I know an optician and a dentist who gave up work to become SAHM. They’re clearly not stupid but they don’t want to work, they want to look after their children (& husbands) full time.

And that is what SAHP do, is it not? School runs, looking after kids, cleaning the house, making dinner, ‘life admin’ etc… I mean, I don’t know for sure as I’m not one but that’s what my SAHM friends say they do.

@pointythings You are absolutely right. I’d not thought about that but it is a relatively new phenomenon to have 1 parent at home doing all the childcare and house work.

I absolutely agree that we need to improve men’s parenting overall but one (just one, men themselves are as much the issue) of the things making that tricky is women’s reluctance to let them take on their fare share of child raising duties. Where I’m from, being perpetually frazzled, moaning about all the things your micromanaged DH does wrong and wearing slogan sweatshirts ‘Mum life’, ‘Winging it’, ‘Raising boys’ is big business.

Sweden must have its fair share of entrepreneurs though, or men who have multiple business interests. It’s not always as simple as cancelling a work trip because everything else would still be going on - for instance, you might be able to delay certain things in certain companies, but others are about to IPO or whatever. The emails keep coming. The City Index or the stock markets don’t just stop? I couldn’t even tell you what my husband is doing half the time, let alone what he earns because it’s not like that. He’s never had a salary. I mean, he has one main company, but also is a non-exec director for about ten other companies, but these change over the weeks / months / years and involve different levels of commitment. It’s always changing. Some pay in shares and it’s complicated. Plus he has a City Index portfolio that needs action at certain times and other investments that he needs to be on top of to varying degrees. It’s really complicated basically. If he was at home with the kids, he wouldn’t switch off from work. I mean I’d leave him with them now they’re older (and also his work is more stable now to ten years ago DS he’s stepping back a bit), but I couldn’t have done when they were little as it would have been unsafe with 4 kids and his level of preoccupation. That’s the truth of it. Most men around here are very similar to my husband. He’s far from unique in this respect.

....you are basically forced to send your babies into day care settings at the age of 1...

How do you think they enforce that? I mean, putting both parents in jail would be pretty effective. But if it's a fine, I mean, that's all well and good if you can afford to keep your kid out of childcare, but not everyone can.

It's one law for the rich and one for the poor, innit?

Not once have I asked him to cancel work for anything. Never occurred to me, to be honest. But these days, he does work more flexibly and can set his own agenda more (also he works from home a lot more), so he is more involved with the kids as they get older.

sw1v a lot of it is about corporate culture. There have been plenty of posts on here making it clear that corporate culture in Sweden is very different from the UK. The example of a high earning pilot being able to step up and look after his sick child without the company batting an eye should be testimony to the fact that it can be done - it's just that it's not part of UK culture. And that is our massive loss.

Toottootdrive I agree that women are often their own worst enemy. When my kids were very young, it was women who judged me most for working full time. Fortunately I'm tough - maybe I should have worn a T-shirt telling the world to let go of their pearls.

I couldn’t even tell you what my husband is doing half the time, let alone what he earns because it’s not like that. He’s never had a salary. I mean, he has one main company, but also is a non-exec director for about ten other companies, but these change over the weeks / months / years and involve different levels of commitment. It’s always changing. Some pay in shares and it’s complicated. Plus he has a City Index portfolio that needs action at certain times and other investments that he needs to be on top of to varying degrees. It’s really complicated basically.

Ooh, what a busily important man doing so many important things that keep him too busy to do something so unimportant as being a father to the 4 children he brought into the world. You must be so very proud.

My best mate lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband. He’s high up and important in the company he works for. When they visit us for holidays, he is never on his phone dealing with work emails or calls. He took 4 months parental leave for both his boys. His company didn’t fold in his absence.

BotedZelda - there is no need to be like that when I’m just being honest about my experience. Would you like me to make something up?

In my experience “important very senior” people have more flexibility than many junior jobs. I think if your DH is so very very important he must earn enough for you to have a nanny to support and not leave you running around like a headless chicken.
Certainly the more senior I have become in my career, the more flexibility and control of my own time I have.

So really your message OP seems to boil down to the fact that you baselessly criticised Sweden as a place where parents can’t parent because they have to work every hour god sends, and thank god you don’t have to live under such conditions. Many of us tell you that’s not the case and you tell us effectively that your husband can’t parent because he has to work every hour god sends, but at least we’re not in pitch dark Sweden. It doesn’t make any sense.

I’m losing the point now too

It wouldn’t be that hard to throw money at it if you wanted to work

So really you sound happy with your set up and for some reason Sweden stuck out as particularly bad

Yes that’s true Pandora and, as I said, he definitely has a lot more time and flexibility now. In fact, he’s semi/retired at 50. But he never worked for a single company with a salary scale or clear progression path in terms of ‘seniority,’ that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s never been like that. And for many years, it was manic frankly, not to mention a bit of a rollercoaster at times so I just had to let him get on with it. I don’t feel like I had any choice and no amount of free daycare would have made my life easier!