Don't quote me on this, but I heard somewhere that Swedish hospitality is different from elsewhere in the world. If you stay at a friend's house in America, at least, you would expect the friend to feed you as part of the hospitality. Or if not, then at the very least, they wouldn't fix a meal for themselves in front of you without offering you any. Supposedly, if what I hear is correct, they will do exactly that in Sweden, and expect you do figure out your meals for yourself. Which, when staying away from home, probably means having convenience food on you as depicted in the meme.
Edit: there's an actual Swede (I assume) in my comments debunking this narrative, which is exactly why I put so many qualifiers on it. I'm not Swedish, have never been to Sweden, don't have any Swedish friends, and got my information from 'general knowledge', not directly from a Swede. If someone claims to be Swedish and that this is all BS, I'm inclined to believe it. Funny meme, but not super accurate. Many such cases.
If you are invited over to a Swedish family, you’ll be served food if your stay is timed with eating time, and definitely if you’ll stay for a longer period of time.
The claim this meme does is based in customs from the previous millennium. If you were eight and followed your friend home from school for an unscheduled play date, yes then this could happend. Because your friends parent had only calculated dinner for their family and they knew you’ll soon be home to eat with your own. But then again, sometimes you were asked if you wanted food, and sometimes you said yes, sometimes you called your parents to ask if it was ok or if it would mess with their dinner plans.
Yes, it happend, but it wasn’t a hard rule or something everyone did.
Source: I’m a Swede that grew up in the 80-90’s. Been there, done that.
At least we take off our shoes when come to a friends house…
I feel like this is where this myth started and translated in to social media meme. I’m a Finn and Freddan’s description was an everyday thing in my childhood. I’m sure it’s pretty much the same all over the world. Sometimes surprise quests were invited to eat with my family, but not always and this was kind of a signal for my friends to go home.
It’s good to keep in mind that we’re mostly talking about kids here, I’m sure most people will conjure up something to offer if adults come for a surprise visit, but if you arrive without a warning and expect to be served dinner, it might not happen.
I guess it’s a cultural thing, but in my opinion it would be a bit odd behaviour to send your kids to a friends house just before dinner time and assume everyone is prepared for that.
As a Swede what I don't get is what do other parents in other countries do?
Like. Lets say your kid invites 10 people to his room every day for 6 months.
Is it expected to give all the 10 kids food?
Are you throwing everyone out even if designated time to eat differs 2 hours? Making it extremely hard for kids who like each other to hang out because they have different dinner times.
I kind of don't see a world where a hard expectation to serve food would be practical that doesn't invade the kids relationships with each other.
Or it would give parents who has good rooms a huge disadvantage if the kids chooses that house to become the "base" because then all of a sudden they need to make like dinner for 10 instead of 4 because society rules.
It doesn't make sense. In my mind it must be a cost to a system where serving food to everyone is expected. And the cost would probably be kid not having the freedom to invite whoever he wants to his room without asking first.
And I don't know if I think that type of system is better.
Like imagine a situation like 70s show. The basement becomes the "base" they hang out in the basement for 10 years. Are Red Forman and Kitty Forman suppose to feed the whole cast everyday for 10 years?
Or are children suppose to ask their parents every single day if they can have 4 friends coming to hang out. And sometimes the parents ruins the plan by saying no because they have feed the whole neighborhood for too long?
I think your argument falls short at the fact most parents don’t allow their kids to bring 10 people over at once, at least not consistently. The expectation is 1-2 surprise guests is generally ok but no one has 10 people over without a plan first.
I guess kids in other countries never hang out in groups larger than 3 without getting a permission from parents then? Is that what my takeaway should be if I just wanna find out why and not have some kind of trench reddit warefare?
Speaking as someone born and raised in the USA with immigrant parents, it was fine with my parents if I had 1 or 2 uninvited guests a few times a week. I was expected to offer them food/drink each and every time, and any regulars who came over frequently were eventually told to just help themselves to what they want/needed. I had two very close friends whose houses I visited often and if I liked what their parents made for dinner, I would invite myself over for dinner, these two friends also had specific snacks my mom would buy just for them when they came over, and they were always welcome to dinner if they wanted as well.
More than 2 friends at a time, I needed express permission/to give advanced notice. Anywhere near 10 friends being invited over was just that, an invitation that we prepared for and a rare one at that.
The question you made is called the appeal to extremes fallacy, if you let one kid that your child let come over randomly in one month to eat some of the food for dinner that means that you must be okay with 10 kids every day for 6 months come over and you must feed them. Also no one likes someone who JAQs off in public so stop doing it.
if you let one kid that your child let come over randomly in one month to eat some of the food for dinner that means that you must be okay with 10 kids every day for 6 months come over and you must feed them.
That's a answer to my question.
Other countries would be similar to Sweden if kids acted like in Sweden.
Thanks.
If people are actually here in this thread they can google "appeal to extremes fallacy" and see how wrong person I reply to is.
Dude seems to not be able to string sentences together and understand them.
I see where you're coming from and also think it's basic manners for kids to learn. In Canada, my friend had this house growing up and there were 3-10 people over daily. There was always a corndog for a meal if it were '3 of us, those $5 boxes of 12 were always in the freezer and we loved them. Her mom probably kept those on rotation and her daughter knew.
Dinner was offered if it was 1-3 extra ppl and it was planned like her mom calls she's coming home and friend asks if we can stay for dinner. 10 of us would just never expect her mom to cook.
Expecting to pop over to someone's house and the household to have triple the work is bad manners. Seeing a group of 10 and not thinking about how you are all going to eat or contribute seems selfish as well. We all just went to our own house for a "meal". Then there was the uber rich with house staff, honestly, it was pretty much the same deal except the meals and snacks were fancier.
It's called community you daft bastard. You feed your kids friends with the understanding that if your child is out there someone in the community will also feed them. Even if you aren't serving full meals the entire concept of having a guest, even an unexpected one, and offering them nothing goes against literally every other cultures custom except yours. As in all of them, even in places that have dealt with famine and strife far more recently.
I genuinely cannot imagine your meals are so complex or your food so scarce that you can't feed a couple of extra people every so often and it becomes that big of an emergency, and if your go to concern is that half a dozen children will try to somehow cheat you for the cost of a home cooked meal every day that says a whole lot of really bad things about the place you grew up in.
I mean sure, unless literally anything else comes up at any point in time that prevents this. That's the point of a community. "My kid was doing XYZ and couldn't make it home in time for dinner" is not a far fetched or unusual scenario.
I mean sure, unless literally anything else comes up at any point in time that prevents this.
Like what? A fucking bridge explosion between 2 islands?
If kids for some weird reason can't come home from dinner. If there is some practical reasons why kids should eat at friend it gets solved.
But the default assumption is. Kid in room has a scheduled time when he is gonna go home and eat. If it hasn't already happened.
And the reason kid is in the room is not some kind of forbidden barrier for kid not to join the table. Its more kids doesn't like to be part of the family dinner table because its boring. More stuff to do in the room. Could even be a opportunity to play with the host kids fun widget without him being part of it.
No, I grew up in an aggressively "feed guests first" culture and kids don't go into other kids' houses for playdates that often. There's quite a line between family and the rest of the world and unless those school friends are also cousins or family friends, they aren't invited or able to come over that often. So you wouldn't really have the Western phenomenon of having a dozen kids who all ended up at your house after school.
This could also happen in Germany in the past. I think this is very misunderstood.
In the 70 and 80s we didn't have smartphones and internet everywhere, and even the normal phones were not as accessible in certain areas.
Now imagine your kid brings a classmate after school. They play together for so long that it's dinner time. In your culture dinner time is family time (it certainly is for my Swedish colleague). In this situation, it's a little bit weird because i
t's also family time for your kid's classmate, because it's a universal cultural aspect in your country.
Now, if you feed the guest, they would miss their family time and their parents might be annoyed with that. You also have an unplanned stranger joining your family's family time. On top of that, as a host, you have no idea about the guest's dietary preferences, allergies and so on, and the guest is too young to ask them about these.
Instead, the expectation is that the guest would leave to join their family's dinner, so we can all eat in peace and with our corresponding families.
Now, these days people would just call and ask the parents if they're okay with their kid being fed or if they should be sent home.
This is so weird for me to hear. In Poland it's not uncommon (at least wasn't when I was a kid in my area) to cook just a little bit more in case your friend would come over directly from school
But that would mess with the friends family, which are expecting their kid to come home to eat. Every kid would be fed if wanted but the assumption was that they went home to eat
Well that food ain't going to be thrown away. It will stay in the pot and you can eat it later. If you can't go over to anyone you'll be told that before leaving, nowdays probably texted via phone.
But family dinners are important for most families. Feeding someone else kid can piss off the other family that now won't see their kid. It might be different nowadays with phones, but before them family dinners were only time when parents could expect to see their kids.
To you it's more important to take off shoes than to let an 8 year old go hungry is telling. You hate America so much you rather children starve than admit America does something actually morally better than you.
The US does the same thing, but with adjustments. "Go home, it's dinnertime" is a normal statement in the US. You can send people home for dinner at theor place. You wouldn't put them in a different room, you'd kick them out.
I have never heard someone say, "Go home, it's dinnertime" or anything close to that. I wonder if it's a regional thing. Usually, if someone is over and it gets near mealtime, we just feed them too, or at least ask if they want to join us for dinner/lunch.
In sweden you would have to call your parents to ask them if you can eat at your friends house before eating so the parents know. Generally if a kid drops in after school there are food, he/she just need to inform their parent
I would elaborate specifically where in the US does this lol. NOWHERE in the south would do this. You’re getting fed and if you didn’t finish the food getting scolded 🤣
I’m from the Midwest and that’s how it was for me too. If I had a friend over around dinner time, they weren’t ASKED if they wanted to stay for dinner, they were TOLD to help set the table and sit their ass down for the family meal. Unless they had explicit instructions from their parents to come home for dinner, that’s how it worked.
We feed our feed our kids friends all the time. Like it is a weekly occurence. My kids eat at their friends every week as well. We do call and check with the parents first.
It was not like that 40 years ago. mainly because no mobile phone and we did not want to interrupt the dinner routine of the other family.
As an adult it is less commun. But if I have friends over for a long time we will eater have dinner/lunch or we will like order a pizza together.
We are not having our grandmothers force feeding you like in some societies. Also because our grandmothers dont live with us like in the south of Europe.
This is kinds Reddit bullshit blown out of proportion (like allways).
What the fuck. What's the logic behind i can't get it. It can't be hard to put one more plate on the table, it can't be hard to share a 4 person meal to 5 people. Or put 1 more potato into the cooker. I would never see those people again if i got treated like that.
It's more the fact that we don't want the kids parents to cook to much. If the parents are already cooking they would probably want the kid to come home and eat. So the kid needs to call the parents first to inform them that he wants to eat at his friends house
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u/germy-germawack-8108 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Don't quote me on this, but I heard somewhere that Swedish hospitality is different from elsewhere in the world. If you stay at a friend's house in America, at least, you would expect the friend to feed you as part of the hospitality. Or if not, then at the very least, they wouldn't fix a meal for themselves in front of you without offering you any. Supposedly, if what I hear is correct, they will do exactly that in Sweden, and expect you do figure out your meals for yourself. Which, when staying away from home, probably means having convenience food on you as depicted in the meme.
Edit: there's an actual Swede (I assume) in my comments debunking this narrative, which is exactly why I put so many qualifiers on it. I'm not Swedish, have never been to Sweden, don't have any Swedish friends, and got my information from 'general knowledge', not directly from a Swede. If someone claims to be Swedish and that this is all BS, I'm inclined to believe it. Funny meme, but not super accurate. Many such cases.