No. That was true maybe 30+ years ago, but nowadays kids are usually sent home before dinner. Or we just check with the parents if it’s OK for their kid to eat with us.
Source: was a kid in Sweden 30+ years ago, have kids in Sweden now.
It was like this when I grew up in the 80s and early 90s too. My best friend ate dinner at 5, but in my house we ate at 6:30. So I either went home at 5, or waited in her room while she she ate, then we played for a while more before I walked home at 6:15 in time for my own dinner. This was considered completely normal. Her mother wasn't expected to feed me practically every day after school just because I always went over there to play.
That's interesting, because I realized at some point in middle school that my friend came over to my house and would stay until just after dinner. His mom was a nurse and a single parent, and I realized my parents weren't just letting him hang out because he was a friend, but because it helped his mom save on after-school care & dinner.
I'm willing to bet it is as much a socio-economic thing as a cultural one. You guys just got pinned with it.
Yeah, quite probably. My friend was the child of a single mother. I come from a family of 6 (or 8 every other weekend when my stepbrothers came to stay). Neither family really had the capacity to feed extra mouths without careful planning. I don't know if things were different in other households with more money to spare - I didn't know the rich kids, haha.
If I had some friend over and I wouldn’t share my food with them my mom would snap my back by throwing me up in the air 3 meters and I would fall on her knee and just die there. If they came over 100 times they would be fed 100 times.
Ah no. I grew up in a poor family in Romania. We were not missing food though. But it kinda blows my mind that a way richer country ends up with that culture. I understand it is normal for you but it is hard for me to comprehend how it ended up being that way.
It's interesting because I've travelled a lot, and I've often observed that the people who have the least are the most generous.
I visited Romania in 1992. In those days, my dad worked for a charity in Sweden that donated medical equipment to hospitals in Bucharest and Constanţa, and other stuff (a whole fire engine, one time.) When we came over, his contacts there insisted that we don't book hotels, they opened up their homes to us and let us stay there, fed us, showed us around and refused to accept any money in return. I remember my dad hiding money in one family's sofa for them to find later, because they just wouldn't take it from him and he thought it was absurd that they'd feed and house four strangers for several days and not accept anything in return.
I don't really know why Swedes have this mentality. Maybe it's to do with not wanting to feel indebted to someone. Like, if you feed my kid, then I now owe your kid food, or something along those lines.
I don't actually live in Sweden anymore (I left in the late 90s) so I don't know if it's still the same. But I don't feed my kids' friends without at least asking their parents first - because I don't want to inconvenience them if they're already halfway through cooking dinner themselves, and also I have no idea which kid is allergic to what.
I meant more like, "I don't know why Swedish people care if they inconvenience another child's parents, when other cultures apparently don't care if that child's parents are halfway through cooking them a meal and would just feed the child regardless".
To me, it's strange to give food to another person's child without asking first, but that might be a uniquely Swedish/Nordic perspective?
Yes, that makes sense. I guess I'm just wondering why what is polite is so different from one culture to another. But that's probably an entirely different discussion.
An entirely different discussion most definitely, but a very interesting one at that! In case you are not yet familiar, I would recommend checking out the 6 cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede (Wikipedia). His website also has the country comparison tool shown on top of the Wikipedia page, it‘s quite interesting to play around with!!
(PSA: I know that a lot more research has been done in the last 40+ years, and many more (nuanced) insights have been gained. Hofstede‘s work back then was however groundbreaking, and it still poses as the basis for further research to this day.)
Ok yeah, maybe it's the thinking that dinner time is family time or that parents in the 90s didn't want to be seen as though they couldn't feed their kids. Not inconveniencing people is definitely also just part of the Nordics
I left Sweden a long time ago (28 years) and generally think of myself as not very Swedish at all anymore. But it's funny how some things just stay with you, even when you've adapted to another culture.
The other parents would know that their child is away though? They wouldn't plan for them for dinner (if it was communicated clearly before of course). As long as it isn't one-sided I don't see an issue here.
No, that's the thing. When I grew up my parents had no idea where I was between the end of school and dinner time. I had a set dinner time when I was expected to be home, but between school and dinner they usually didnt know where I was.
There were times when I was at a friends house playing and they ate dinner earlier than I, and at dinner time they asked if I wanted to eat with them. I had to call to check with my parents first. But the expectation was that you as a kid would eat with your own family, as dinner is usually family time.
Yes, they will be eating at home and I will send them home before I eat my own dinner with my family versus sticking them off in the other room for an hour only to send them home to eat at their house right after?
It's not really about not sharing. It's just how it was. No one feeds another child dinner without arranging it with their parents first.
I'm not Swedish but Danish where this was a similar practice. Often I went over to my friends house, and if I didn't get picked up before dinner, sometimes my parents would arrange for me to eat with my friends family, and sometimes they might not be able to pick me up in time before my friends family started dinner, but my parents might still want me to eat dinner with my family as that is an important social interaction.
Starving to death was so common in the nordics that they did not write about it. What you write is true about poor communities in places with a normal caloric excess. When the normal is a caloric defficit, the culture is much harder.
If it was a hard year noone had extra food. Someone was going to die. If you gave it away it would be you instead of your neighbour.
That’s an insane take. 200 years ago times were tough so now I don’t cook food for child guests in one of the richest countries in the world… meanwhile in anywhere else that’s still currently a poor country and has been for 100s of years you can go and be treated like family and fed everyday.
How many kids did you have visting every day for dinner though? And did the parents even know said kids are there before shopping or even started cooking?
If you have a house and kids in the Nordics, you are likely to not know how many kids are in the house when you come home from work and start dinner.
Can't imagine a poor family cooking dinner for 5-20 extra kids daily, you would need 1-2 extra jobs just to afford it. Imagine being like a family of 30 and doing that cooking daily after work and before your kids go to sports etc.
I think there were more like 50-60 kids daily. The whole school. And it was a surprise every day, u never knew they’d all come. So my mom had to cook for 60 people every day. If she didn’t have the necessary food we would all chomp on her leg coz she would freely give it away and everybody was fed.
Well it’s not about “not sharing”, it is more about not “forcing” your food upon others. The main reason I tended not to eat at others were that I did not wanna eat at 5-6, as we typically ate around 8 at home, so I was not even slightly hungry when food was offered. And similarly, my friends had already died from starvation when food was offered at our house.
If it's not "forcing" why not at least ask? That's literally what an invitation is. Nobody forces other peoples kids to eat with them. But not even offering sounds harsh.
The point is they didn't want to be seen as taking away proper family dinner time from a child by unilaterally giving them food witout communicating with the family first. It makes sense if you think about other cultures for half a second.
That still doesn't explain why one wouldn't ask. Like you still can ask the parents of that child. I'm sure Sweden had phones in the 80s.
This all sounds more like an excuse for being very distant to others. Which is okay. But be honest about it at least.
Just so you know I'm from Germany and we did the same. So I'm not critizising another culture as you try to put it into my mouth.
Sure, there were occasions where I as a child would be asked if I wanted to eat at my friends place, so I had to call home and ask if that was okay, but the norm was that kids would eat with their own family as parents expected to have their kids home by dinner.
Dinner in Sweden is (or at least was back then) family time, so was usually for family only.
Well I guess it is a difference in culture about declining offers also, as I think most swedes probably feel uncomfortable declining any kind offer if they do not have a good reason. And “I don’t like your food” might be the reason but it is not acceptable to say.
So I would say that if a swede offers you something you better accept it or chance offending them. And similarly you don’t offer anything unless you are perfectly sure they will accept, as offering something which is undesired is also quite frowned upon.
That said, I was still offered food multiple times at friends so this whole discussion is over exaggerated.
I grew up in a "feed visitors no matter what" culture and what often happens is that visiting is mostly between extended family and family friends. Kids don't go over to other people's houses to play unless they already have family ties. You don't really have the phenomenon of a kid who's family you don't know coming over after school every day.
It's actually not that common anywhere to be feeding your children's friends every day, unless they're also your nieces/nephews etc.
I grew up before Xboxes were invented. And we're not talking about a glass of water, we were talking about feeding dinner to a child that turned up at your house without prior arrangement.
That was childhood for most of the world. You feed anyone in your house at meal time regardless of prior arrangement. That’s why we are all here discussing this meme.
Yes. I'm just saying that to a Swedish family (at least, 30-40 years ago when I was a kid) there's a difference between planned guests and people who turn up uninvited.
If you had invited someone over, prearranged, then they would of course get fed. If someone turned up without prior arrangement, they could not expect you to suddenly slot them into your dinner plans. That's just the way it was.
There is even a word for turning up unannounced - "våldgästa" - it translates to making yourself a guest with violence. The closest English equivalent would be to "gatecrash", I suppose. It's just not acceptable in Swedish culture to turn up at someone's house without invitation, it's seen as imposing yourself on them and inconveniencing them.
I left Sweden long ago, but most of my family and friends who still live there do not even answer the doorbell unless they're expecting someone. Because "normal" people don't just turn up at your door, meaning that anyone ringing the doorbell at random probably wants to sell you something, or worse.
When I grew up, we didn't really have "extras for leftovers". We were a family of 6 (8 every other weekend when my stepbrothers came to stay) and my mother would plan food for that number of people. If there were 6 of us, she'd have bought 6 pieces of fish exactly. There was no "extra".
Turning up at someone's house unannounced is considered rude in Sweden (at least if you're a grown-up. Kids turning up asking to play with your kids is a different thing.) You just don't do that. Things are planned and arranged in advance so as to not inconvenience anyone. Rummaging in someone's fridge would be seen as rude and invasive as well.
Anecdotally, I had one of my son's friends (they are 8) looking through my kitchen cupboards the other day, hunting for "a snack". I told her "I have some apples, but that's it, the other snacks I bought this week have already been eaten." She said "but I have loads of snacks at my house" (yeah, because you're always here eating ours!!) so I suggested perhaps she should go home and get one then - she lives in the apartment next door. Her kitchen is on the other side of my kitchen wall. You might think I'm the rude one in that situation, but I think her parents should have taught her better manners than going rummaging in someone else's kitchen. We don't live in Sweden anymore, by the way, but I don't think this is considered acceptable behaviour in British households either.
"Shut up and eat it night" is an excellent concept, haha.
I think my mother had a particular thing about making sure we had variety in our diet and didn't eat the same thing every day. Also, she was a stay at home mum (that's partly why we didn't have much money, single income household) so I don't think she minded cooking every day. Gave her something to do, hahaha. She's in her 70s now and often eats leftovers, it just wasn't something that happened much when we were kids. Maybe if she made spaghetti bolognese or something else that came in one big pot, we'd have leftovers for lunch the next day.
Most Swedes are very reserved. One of the many reasons I left Sweden back in '98 was that I am far too fond of talking to strangers to fit in there. I made my home in Wales, where talking to people you don't know is a completely normal thing. Suits me much better.
You're welcome! It's always interesting to hear other perspectives. Also, my take on Swedish culture is probably woefully outdated. Hopefully an up-to-date Swede will come along with more current knowledge.
It would be normal if you were regularly at their house. It wouldn’t make sense for your friend’s family to feed you 3 nights a week because you happened to be playing when your own dinner was coming later. People are taking this story as if it’s a Swedish custom to not feed visitors. Meanwhile, I am normally drowning in fika every time I visit someone.
Yes, exactly. And there is also the difference between a guest who has been invited and planned for and a person who just randomly shows up without warning, as is the case with all my kids' friends.
Sometimes, I walk into my living room and find four extra children there, who have come home with mine or just shown up at the door wanting to play. No reasonable person would expect me to be prepared to make dinner for four extra kids whenever they show up, would they?
It would be different if I'd invited these kids, of course I'd feed them if I had arranged playdates with their parents in advance.
The part that people always miss with these "feeding" cultures is that they're often quite closed off to non -family members. I grew up in a culture where you feed every guest, but I didn't have the after school playing culture that you do in the West. You play with other kids in the street/outside, but I rarely went into other kids' houses. No sleepovers, play dates etc. Family time is much more important. Family is larger and includes more non-blood related people, but I can't think of many major culture where you would realistically be feeding large numbers of non-family kids just because they're at your house.
If they ARE at your house, they're getting fed, but the culture of having a ton of kids playing at your house after school just doesn't really exist.
But from another perspective, it sounds considerate and respectful.
Have you ever stood and cooked a meal, and then the person you cooked it for says "nah, I don't want it, I ate on the way here"? How did that make you feel? Annoyed? Disappointed? Like your time could have been better spent than cooking for an ungrateful person who didn't stop and think about you at all?
My friend's mother didn't feed me, not to be "cold" towards me, but because she didn't want to upset my mother who would already be preparing food for me at home.
Your mother probably also felt happier about you playing at their place all the time with the knowledge that she wasn't also offloading her responsibility to make your dinner to them.
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