To wonder about other countries approaches to raising children

[Mamabear04]

I was approached in a supermarket by an elderly woman who I think just wanted a chat because she was lonely. I was with my baby and she proceeded to tell me about her son who lives in the Netherlands and how they let their kids stay up late, unlike British parents who can't wait to get their kids to bed. It got me to wondering about how other cultures raise their kids. I do put my children to bed early at 7pm, yes because I like to have the evenings to rest but also it means they gets a solid 11-12 hours sleep and wake for the working day at 7am. A friend who lives in France said that kids are seen and not heard there and have hardly any play parks (I was a bit shocked about the play parks tbh), she also said Israeli families consider their kids the biggest blessing from God and so let their kids do anything (in a nice way not an antisemitic way. They are a multicultural family). I also have a friend who said her cousin still sleeps in the same room as her parents at 9 years old and they live in UAE. I'm just so curious about how other cultures raise their kids and also how people see British families as well. I only ever hear that British families don't eat together and don't engage with their kids. Anyone from outwith the UK want to tell about how they raise their children? Do you really think of British families like this?

Most Nottinghamshire and many Derbyshire schools have the 6ft green fencing. Sadly even in the Peaks with tiny rural schools, communities can't access playground equipment in school holidays or at weekends.

Yorkshire here. We have a park playground that is shut during school hours as they use it and then open during holidays. Only thing locked is the pitch because it has been damaged by youths and cost several thousand of pounds to fix.

My street also has children playing out which is unusual.

You really need to provide evidence if you're going to come out with such inflammatory comments😡
It is NOT okay to say 'Apparently' followed by a string of very serious accusations.

You refer to Ireland as 'there' so guessing you don't have any first hand experience of the country? I've lived here all my life and I really don't believe what you're said is true. No country is perfect and you will have bad apples everywhere, but extreme violence against children is just as shocking in Ireland as it is in the UK or elsewhere. It is certainly not accepted or commonplace.

The majority of Irish children are not expected to fend for themselves at 16. The majority are in school until 18. In fact stats show that kids in NI (the UK) are two to three times more likely to leave school early than those in the Republic of Ireland.

Your comment sounds quite xenophobic to me.

I think it might be wholly dependent where you live. Rural U.K. here and much more relaxed. All children in the village play out, usually until dusk in summer. Loads of play parks, one in each village even the tiny hamlet ones have a few swings annd a roundabout etc. If you child is being an idiot (doing something naughty) guaranteed someone will come and tell you about it so nothing goes unnoticed and kids are often reprimanded by other parents and no one gets upset (unless it was really uncalled for). Children have a lot of freedom, nothing locked up or fenced. Personally never forced my kids to eat everything, that’s a hangover from my parents who were war babies and made us do that. I hate it. Bedtimes relaxed, nothing too late on a school night though!

I live in an Asian country and DH is from a different Asian country. The two countries raise their children similarly. I’m British, but we follow the Asian traditions for raising our kids as we like it better and it suits us more. For example:

• bed sharing. Lots of children sleep with their parents until they’re as old as 10! Even older if they fancy it. Kids are never expected to have their own rooms, and very few homes have a specific ‘child’s bedroom’ - there will just be standard bedrooms because children share with adults. It’s considered cruel and bad parenting to force a child to sleep alone if they don’t want to.
• diet and mealtimes. Kids eat the same dishes as adults do - there are no ‘kids menus’ in restaurants and parents never cook a separate meal for the kids. Every meal is cooked hot, so kids don’t eat packed lunches with sandwiches and crisps and biscuits and similar like back home in the UK, so most kids are less fussy with food and have more varied diets. Kids will obviously also eat at the same time as adults so no early dinners like in the UK. If I ever tell anyone that British kids eat dinner as early as 5, but always before 7, and are usually asleep not much later too, people are so surprised!
• education. Education is extremely valued and important and children have more pressure than in the UK. Children have extracurriculars almost every day from a young age and tutors. (We encourage extracurriculars but only in things that the kids enjoy and classes they choose themselves).
• social life. The streets are never empty here - people socialise outside whenever they have free time. Kids spend almost all of their free time outside. Kids are 100% welcome in every restaurant - people would never expect them to be quiet and would laugh and enjoy their mischief if they’re being loud! Whereas in the UK it would be seen as rude. Children are often seen out very late - it’s not at all odd to see children still out with their parents at 10/11 at night, especially at the weekend. There’s no designated time when kids are expected to be home so that adults can enjoy quiet time in restaurants. Nobody seems to feel the need for quiet time away from kids being kids noises aren’t seen as a burden like back home.
• bedtime. Everyone naps at lunch - adults and children alike - for between 1 and 3 hours depending on their age. Work and school schedules deliberately set their days timetable to make time for a nap. So children - even very young, kindergarten age - Usually go to sleep around 10 PM on a school night. They get the recommended amount of sleep, but because of the 2/3 hour long nap, they don’t need it all at night. As a result they sleep later at weekends and during holidays and parents never stress about their child waking up too early!
• routine. Strict routines simply aren’t valued or seen as necessary or beneficial. Bedtimes change, days change, late nights aren’t a problem and so on. I seem to have a much more relaxed experience of motherhood than my sisters and friends who live in the UK and follow the strict early mealtimes for kids/separate cooking for kids/battling kids to bed early every night/can’t take kids outside after a certain time/can’t ever do anything that disrupts routine/always woken up around 6AM as the child went to bed so early thing. My kids and I go to bed together, at the same time, in the same bed. They sleep peacefully and never wake up or get up or have any trouble falling asleep. They eat what we eat at the same time we eat it which saves time and means they’ll eat anything! If we want to go out to s nice restaurant and have a late night we can take them too and know that they’ll be welcomed by staff and customers alike (foreign kids are treated like tiny celebs here which helps 😂) and also there’ll be other kids there to play with them. It’s much easier to raise children like this, I think. The kids I know (I’m a teacher) are very confident and flexible too, so I think it’s good for them.

This sounds great! I want to try bedsharing. Do you have extra large beds, or flood beds, then?
We have a big bed and are skinny but it already feels cramped with just me and my husband.

Over the past few years I've seen articles about the way people bring their kids up in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. There is less babying of kids, and less emphasis on the notion of "parenting".

Kids are celebrated for their own achievements and not seen as an extension of their parents for their parents to preen themselves if their kids do something good, or for them to be lambasted if their kids do something bad.

I don't know if that's true, but I find the British habit of blaming parents for the bad behaviour of older teens and younger adults rather odd - as if people don't have any sort of free will of their own and only do what their parents tell them.

This all sounds lovely!

I grew up in Italy and Austria and was so surprised that everything is fenced in in the UK: schools, playgrounds, nurseries. Never seen it before

I think the fencing in schools and nurseries came about because of Dunblane Although there have been school shootings in Austria I think (not sure about Italy).

I think playparks are fenced in to keep dogs out, and I think that is normal in other countries too. Other facilities like 3G pitches or tennis courts are fenced in so you have to pay to use them and to stop them being vandalised.

No country is perfect, some people have highlighted a lack of SEND provision in French schools as well as children being streamed based on ability in Germany
Of course there are good schools and bad schools in every country but it seems to be a huge concern for parents in the UK or at least in England - stressing about sending your child to a good school seemed to be a huge thing when I was living in London

I've also heard that SEND provision in Scandinavia is bad compared to the UK. Not being the norm is not paid special attention to, apparently.

I don't know any standard Irish parenting that's universal. I live rurally so there would be differences between us and city folk. And there's a lot that's shaped by how we live, commuting and so on. I never got home before 6.45 so there's no way that DS would be fed, washed and in bed before 7pm. My SIL's dinner time in her house is 4pm, ours is about 7.30 or 8 depending on what I'm cooking.

What I do notice though is that in real life I have never heard of a grandparent wanting alone time with your new baby the way I see here on mumsnet. But maybe that's because the crop of grannies at the moment had often 3+ kids themselves if not way more, or we came from big families where the older ones had to look after the younger ones so while we are happy to have a cuddle and a visit, we aren't begging to take the baby alone for hours or overnight.

@OriginalBliss sounds like Canal Way ETNS? Fab school. I've done subbing work there.

Crime rates is much lower up here , just for your information , almost 40% lower

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1030625/crime-rate-uk/#:~:text=The%20crime%20rate%20in%20the,it%20increased%20slightly%20to%2052.8.

I've really enjoyed this thread not least because we are currently in Switzerland with DPs family.

We've been here regularly since we had kids, so I've done a lot of observing the family/society set-up.

Like Germany there is a huge emphasis on healthy lifestyles, exercise and eating well. Nearly every village has an outdoor pool water playback, many edging onto a lake and many families cycle as the facilities here are excellent.

There are strong expectations in terms of how to behave, I was once told off by an elderly lady when my toddler dropped a small piece of chocolate from her lolly, and I didn't pick it up from the grass.

I used to think this was oppressive, but families, and kids here seem happy and well connected to family and society, and allowed a lot of freedom within those strong expectations. They are well socialised, kids take care of each other eg. Happy to wait in a cue for the swing, will help toddler onto the climbing frame etc

DP would play out all day and walk to school age 4 with his brother age 6.

Croatia where my husband is from seems to have a much more relaxed approach on one hand but is much more conservative on the other.

Co-sleeping is very common, bottle feeding is not stigmatised nor are epidurals or c-sections, there is no concern about disposable nappies or wipes. It's just do what's easier and works for you. Apart from a night out babies and kids go where there parents go, do what they do and eat what they do. It's very common to see parents socialise with their friends who may or may not have them themselves inc. at bars (during the day) and restaurants. It would be unheard of for children to not be invited to a wedding or expected to be in bed or ignored if you visited someone in the evening. Grandparents help as much as they can, families resources are pooled and even siblings help. Maternity leave and job protections are good, kindergarten free and sharing childcare and chores between men and women is normal, as is men talking parental leave. In public pregnant women and new mothers are shown a lot of respect and consideration, and there are increasingly incentives for having more children and staying home to look after them.

On the other hand children out of wedlock is taboo, divorce and single motherhood can be considered shameful and abortion is legal but can be hard to get sign off on. Women are expected to get married and have children, it is the only "good way" and a phrase you hear a lot is that a child makes a woman "complete". Though not early most are 30+, university educated and have careers atleast in the main cities.

I’m in France at the moment and the French kids haven’t stood out at all but at every single service station and hotel we’ve been to (a lot as we drove to the cote d’azur and back with a newly potty trained toddler) there has been groups of older Dutch kids (preteens and sometimes even teens) in the baby/toddler play areas hogging all the stuff. It’s really strange actually.

SE Asian family, this is how I remember my childhood (although I expect things will have changed).

No children's menus and zero concept of picky eating, above a certain age kids are expected to just eat the same and at the same time as everybody else. However. Babies and toddlers are spoon-fed with appropriate baby foods which are quite bland and boring (plain congee seemed to feature a lot); their mealtimes were separate from the older members of the family. Most annoyingly, toddlers were not really expected to sit down to be spoon-fed but were allowed to run around being pursued by the feeder. I can't recall how toddlers were expected to make the leap to sitting down, using cutlery to feed themselves, and enjoying the powerfully spicy cuisine. But somehow, it happened.

Routines specifically for babies/toddlers not really a big thing. The only "routines" were based around what the whole family needed to do for going to work/school, getting chores done, etc.

Bedtimes therefore also not really a thing, beyond a vague expectation that the kids would go to bed before the adults. In fact, it's still quite common to see whole families (the little ones having been bathed and changed into pyjamas) going out for dinner and then strolling around the shopping malls until the 10pm closing time. Smaller children have afternoon naps but this gets phased out by primary school age.

Isn’t co-sleeping very common here though? I know lots of people who did it but friends and everyone at NCT and baby groups. Can’t be an isolated group!

Sorry not but! Comma!

It's interesting how many people who you can know doing something yet that is far from the norm. Quite genuinely, I'd say 90%+ of the many mums I knew with both my children were still breastfeeding their babies at 1 year old. Apparently the national average for still breastfeeding at turning 1 is 0.5%. I find it incredible my experience with such a large group of people from different friendship groups can be so different from the statistical norm.

Yes. Everyone I knew breastfed too, some until 2/3.

I think we could do a whole new thread on how different social classes look after babies!

Yep I would say co sleeping is normal here too based on my circles, and not frowned upon at all. I’m always talking about my love of co sleeping! Same with breastfeeding, most people around me seem to breastfeed until at least 1, many until 2. I was wondering the other day where they get these statistics from? I’ve never been asked if I breastfeed still (baby is 18 months and I do) so how do they know it’s only 0.5% at 1??

Are you sure you aren’t just following the same school coach trip up the motorway?