More on Life in Sweden - Adventures in Lagom

[pennswoods]

I went out last night with a bunch of expats and learned quite a few interesting new things that hadn't experienced before. But there are others that do keep coming up regularly and I thought I'd list a few of them here:

1. I learned last night that when you give birth in Sweden, you are not allowed to leave the hospital until you pass a breastfeeding

Comments

[drinkingcocoa]

Although it's dreadful to think of holding a new mother and baby hostage until they jump through hoops, I concur wholeheartedly that it can be ruinous to have misinformation about how to breastfeed. Here's something funny: in Philadelphia, we are taught that it's called "the hoagie method," and it's not meant humorously at all! That's just what we call it! But yes, if you don't get enough of the breast into the infant's mouth, extreme pain can result. Argh. Argh. My mother didn't know this and quit nursing, in agony, very quickly.

There are words that mean similar things to "lagom" in Korean, but there is nothing of "lagom" about life in Korea! That would be culture shock for me, for sure.

[pennswoods]

Oh good. I think Korea would practice the very opposite of lagom! But I don't know that Sweden ever went through the same recent period of deprivation and subjugation that Korea has, so it makes sense that attitudes would be different.

[drinkingcocoa]

Korea's almost never not been deprived and subjugated. ;-) You just don't want to be the peninsula between China and Japan, heh. I love talking to Italians about being a peninsula. I have often wondered if the similarities between the national characters of Italy and Korea, including the bewildering simultaneous refinement and histrionic excess, hedonism and religious extremity and turbulence, has anything to do with being shaped by geography.

Wow, that list of traits is about as anti-Swedish as I can imagine. ;-) I'm amused.

[lampblack]

Here, you can't leave the hospital with your new baby unless you can produce a bright shiny new infant car seat that meets requirements that change every six months or so. :(

[pennswoods]

Ugh! Christ. :(

That has got to be so difficult for parents.

[drinkingcocoa]

Oh yeah, the car seat requirement. Yeah. And those car seats are no joke. I will never forget the episode of Desperate Housewives where a couple is sneaking their own baby out of the hospital, ahead of the cops, and it's all heart-pounding chase music and fast cuts until they have to take the car seat out of the box and then everything grinds to a dead halt as they pore over the instructions with blank-faced panic. Yeah. Car seats.

[goseaward]

Hmm. That's an interesting concept. There's some evidence that people feel better about their choices when they don't have so many--that having lots of choice tends to lead to regret about the choices not taken.

On the other hand, I wonder if this contributes to the version of tall poppy syndrome that I'm told is common in Scandinavia...

[pennswoods]

I think both conditions are true in Sweden. When you don't have a lot of choices, you don't know what you're missing. The problem comes about when you start seeing other choices and options through the media.

And tall poppy syndrome is definitely present in Sweden, so to combat it, people are socialized into a belief in equality (the same treatment for all) so that competitiveness and excellence are not valued traits.

[mrsscience]

As someone who has been thinking a lot about having children, reading about the maternity leave policies of other countries makes me ill. Apparently they've introduced a bill here to try to start changing that, but I don't expect much from it. The fact that we are the ONLY developed country in the world without mandatory maternity leave is horrid. As someone said above - no wonder there's a persistent gender gap in the workplace. And now childcare is so expensive (rivaling college tuition, except in college you get scholarships), more and more women are staying home with kids. I find it so, so scary to have my options so limited.

[pennswoods]

The US situation is dire. There are many reasons why my husband and I are child free, but at the forefront of all of them is money. With the cost of health care and time off work and our own student loans, not to mention the cost of university for any future children, we just could not afford to have children. And so we did not.

It frustrates me to no end that the US is failing to invest in its own future by making the cost of parenting so unbelievably expensive.