What things do you struggle with that are culturally acceptable?

[Amapoleon]

Yesterday I was in the dr's waiting room and watched a mother repeatedly smack her child. The child was very aggressive [I wonder why] and every time he was aggressive she whacked him.

Although illegal in Spain, smacking in some quarters is still acceptable. I am only speaking from my experience in my area and don't want to make sweeping generalisations that all Spanish people smack their kids. There were 4 or 5 other mothers and no one batted an eyelid.

yes I am not very rational or fair when it comes to that have been away for ages but still remember some experiences from way back
I suppose I still carry stories of my mother's frustration growing up in the 50's and so on am sure there are perfectly lovely people but imo it is still quite casually racist and sexist

Our gardienne's DH rather shows up the Frenchmen who inhabit the block!

I think there is still a lot of 'oppression' back in the homeland,the patriarchal influence of the church and not so distant dictatorship. I find people act differently when away from the more traditional 'family' ways I think men particularly benefit from being away and living with the wife rather than too near their mothers but perhaps it is the same everywhere

I grew up in Northern Italy then settled in London for teenage and adult life. In Italy I am/was always initially amazed and at the boobs bouncing around on daytime TV channels and general nudity of the female body on display. By the end of my hols I am rather immune to it, esp being in the same room as my cousins and Uncles who are not batting an eyelid and see it is very normal, which I suppose it is.

On the whole I feel they treat children v well and respectfully, although can be on the overprotective side they take child rearing and health very seriously. Having said this I don't take off DD tights until May and other Mums and nursery ALL comment on her being "well" wrapped up. I think this is v Italian as is my obsession with Camomile Tea and Honey. Some things just don't leave you.

Pickng up on the driving comments. Here in Spain it drives me insane how its perfectly acceptable for a driver to just stop dead, no indication, literally anywhere, even on a zebra crssing to let somebody out. Other drivers just don´t react at all.

However if you stop for mre than a second at a roundabout every car behind is blasting, and I mean blasting its horn - ahhhhhhh.

Oh and a funny thing that has always got me here in Spain is seeing a learner driver out on a lesson in a learner car with 2 or even 3 passengers in the back. Can anyone enlighten me??

foxytocin - I would think US is nowhere near
"on par with the US" on tinysocks' 4th point - "young girls make a conscious decision to have babies early, move on to different partners, have more babies, do nothing with their lives and then end up struggling" - for the simple reason that US has no UK-style benefits system where you can keep having kids and state will give you a place to live, money to live on, etc.

bebespain where are you in Spain? I struggle with driving in the UK now after a long time in rural Spain where everyone tootles along nice and slowly and I could drive at 40 mph and still be faster than plenty of people on the road.

I think the deal with learners is that people's friends go along to watch and learn - makes sense really when you think about it, though I think I would have had a nervous breakdown

I like the fact that people in Spain are really direct. BTW kitbit, it is not only foreigners who get stressed out by the doctors - a good Spanish friend of mine had a stand-up row with the doctor after he told her to stop co-sleeping with her baby!

Takver - I´m in Madrid, say no more! Driving in rural Spain would be much more my cup of tea!

Thanks for the info re the learner drivers, I´m so glad I didn´t have to learn here

have vyou ever looked at the published statistcs for teen pregnancies below 18 for the US and the UK CotedAzur?

you'd find some startling similarties. same for lots of othert socio economic factors for multiple partners, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion. I am afraid.

I've lived in both places btw.

Ah, yes, I did drive through Madrid once . . .

Round us it was more a matter of keeping your eyes out for very, very slow elderly people in C15 vans, and even slower ones leading donkeys

foxytocin - I'm familiar with statistics. They only tell you number of teenage pregnancies.

What they don't tell you is that in the UK these girls can and often do make the choice to then do nothing with their lives because state gives them a home and money to live by, whereas in the US there is no such free money & housing to those who manage to get knocked up. So in the US young mums are supported by their own families and/or get their act together really quickly and work hard for their money.

Of course there are exceptions to both sides, but the fact is that it is possible to make this lifestyle choice in the UK whereas it is not possible to lie back and be supported by the state in the US.

Which is why I said I doubt if this observation of littlesocks in UK would be anything comparable to what happens in the US: "young girls make a conscious decision to have babies early, move on to different partners, have more babies, do nothing with their lives and then end up struggling"

Ah, I thought of one more thing: How you people in Europe think yoghurt is a dessert. Very bizarre.

Actually I think that the country (excluding developing countries) with the highest rate of teenage pregnancies is the US, followed by Canada and the UK.

Ahh I have come to this thread quite late because I thought I was culturally in tune But now I realise I have been living in a bubble.

Here, no one calls you back, ever. Not even when you are interested in buying a 600,000 pound house. Then they never turn up when they say they are going to. We are talking black and white folk alike. It drives me NUTS.

When we were living in Berlin I struggled with the fact that I wasn't allowed to mow the lawn on a Sunday or indeed on any public holiday (or in fact between the hours of 1pm and 3pm Neighbours would come and tell me if I was mowing at an unauthorised time (a few years earlier they would no doubt have reported me to the Stasi!) I also found their love of nudity quite hard to get to grips with. There was a fabulous spa at my gym - but you could only use the facilities (which were mixed sex) if you were naked. Take your towel in and you are in big trouble - but heaven help you are not wearing flip flops! Most confusing.

Themaster, estate agents never call you back in Italy too! They are always mysterious and it always looks as if they are selling drugs, not flats!

Lol at the flip flops Lilian. I find the German love for nudity quite endearing, though!

"for the simple reason that US has no UK-style benefits system where you can keep having kids and state will give you a place to live, money to live on, etc."

You need to go see how the poor live in any large US city to get an idea of what you are talking about. It doesn't have to be the projects of Chicago or East LA or Watts or South Central. Any big US City and the poor in the rural South of all the south. The poor of New Orleans before Katrina.

one of the differences here is that we have to drive through a lot of the poor parts of Large UK cities to get to many of the cozy rich parts. With US cities you just take your certain Interstate exit and you never have to know of the huge areas of social deprivation equal to small British cities in some cases. Because largely their cities are planned and laid out for the most part, not growing organically like the British ones did over centuries.

I take it you are referring to some recent news (say in the last 5-10 yrs) reports out of some states now making benefit recipients 'work for food' and hunting down deadbeat dads to pay for all their kids etc.

Those laws are only coming into effect in the last 10 yrs or so in very few states and I can imagine being challenged in the courts so a lot of other states are playing a wait and see game.

These laws were taking hold in the long era of a very right of centre US Politics (including the entire Clinton era, btw). Deadbeat dads, teen pg, abortion, homelessness, benefits, HUD Homes (equivalent of Council homes) the abuse of crack cocaine in black communities and the abuse of methamphetamine in poor white communities, failure to complete high school in many demographical areas, Goodwill clothing depots... the list goes on.

There is little for either the UK or US to be proud of. Point for point, they match each other.

I agree that the US has a different mentality towards alcohol and the workplace but I think this comes out of a long history of an ambivalent relationship with alcohol, for example, the Prohibition.

All very interesting, except that I didn't say anything about deprivation, alcohol, etc.

The point was that young girls can and often do make the choice to have babies early, and go on to spend their lives living off benefits, in a home paid for by the state. That is just not possible in the US, and hence there is no such "choice".

where is the evidence to back up what you say, cote?

you really think that there are not many people in the states who are 40 yrs old, have a fair few kids live off the state and never held a job?

if not so, why is it that quite a few states have passed laws to stop this type of thing going on and quite a few more are champing at the bit to do the same?

PS tinysocks mentioned alcohol and deprivation and btw, all part of the larger picture teen pg, benefits and multiple daddy phenomenon both here and in the US.

you'd agree that no one passes laws banning slavery where it doesn't exist, no? Likewise with this situation.

What evidence do you want for the fact that in the US young single mums don't get a house and an allowance just because they managed to get knocked up?

Bebespain - ah the Spanish driving - that I don't miss. Where we were if someone saw someone they knew coming in the other direction they would stop in the middle of the road for a chat. Crazy

Mind you I saw a doddery old English fella on holiday drive along the wrong side of the road, around the roundabout the wrong way and exit on to the wrong side then swerve across to the right side when he realised. I hope his wife didn't realise what happened.

Interesting thread!

I live in Scandinavia and honestly cannot get my head around people leaving sleeping babies in prams outside shops, cafes etc (they often leave a monitor as well if in a cafe so they can quickly run out if the baby wakes) - and this is in a capital city too.

My evidence is irrelevant, Cote. You have already dismissed it below. From your post below I can only conclude you have something more enlightening to share with everyone?

no?

thought so.

I didn't say they got a house just for getting knocked up. or maybe you want to show me where I said that below.

I said they have a benefits system and whether or not they get a house hasn't stopped them from having the same sort of social problems to the same or worse extent as it exists in the UK.

I take it you have little or no proof to back up what you say anyway so i shall stop wasting bandwith now.

Without reading the whole thread:

School playgrounds being open to the public - no fences or anything and often, children playing outside with little or no supervision at playtime.

Using words like 'vegetable' to describe a person and also 'retarded' which is used by schools to describe students who have low IQ. Also, 'nigger' (but only used by black people talking to each other).

Spitting on the street