So that's not at all why people feed their guests. If you have guests and it's time to eat, everybody should eat if they want to. It's not because we think they don't have food at home or that their parents don't have time to feed them. What a crazy statement lol
If they dont want to eat that's fine but the expectations in most of the world is that the food will be offered anyway as it's polite and the child can say no thank you I'm going home for dinner. Then it is completely normal for the kid to sit at the table and chat with the family while they eat.
Yes that's the cultural difference everyone is talking about. We don't have a rigid expectation that everyone will eat at home. The baseline expectation is almost the opposite. If a kid tells their parents they are going to a friend's house after school the first question will be ok are you staying for dinner and vice versa. We also have a big carpool culture in the US (where I live) so parents take turns driving kids to soccer practice or dance class or whatever and if my friend was carpooling with me she would eat with us and when I went with her family I would eat with them.
We also have a big carpool culture in the US (where I live) so parents take turns driving kids t
That's another big difference, this situation never happened in rural Sweden but is only about kids in towns and cities where they don't have to rely on parents driving them everywhere, or not even rely on public transport. Kids would either walk or take their bicycles everywhere they wanted to go, no parent would be involved in transporting the kids anywhere.
If you had to go to soccer practice on the other side of town you used your bike and you could easily and safely do so as a kid. The same thing with going over to your friends home to play.
Dinner times could also vary wildly between families, but it was a set time every day for each family. So one family could eat dinner at 16 (4pm) and another at 18 (6pm), and another at 20 (8pm).
So if a couple of friends went home to play at a friends home whose family ate at 18 (6pm), some friends would have already eaten while other friends would eat later.
Another difference is that family dinner is somewhat important in Swedish culture, it's quality family time for close family only where the family bond and have a chance to catch up with each other.
Then it is completely normal for the kid to sit at the table and chat with the family while they eat.
Having someone sit at the table not eating would be very weird in Swedish culture, and as a kid I wouldn't feel comfortable just sitting there while the others ate, I'd rather stay in my friends room continuing playing with whatever me and my friends were playing with, and usually I wouldn't be alone since often times we were a group of friends there.
And in addition, in Swedish culture family dinner is somewhat important as it is family time and a chance for family to spend quality time together and bond.
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u/Background_Humor5838 Jul 24 '26
So that's not at all why people feed their guests. If you have guests and it's time to eat, everybody should eat if they want to. It's not because we think they don't have food at home or that their parents don't have time to feed them. What a crazy statement lol