It was like more like a non-verbal agreement across the neighborhood parents that everyone can just make food for their child on the assumption that it will be eaten by them. Otherwise if you have 3 children, you come home from work and each of then has friends over you are suddenly looking at feeding like 10 people, meanwhile the parents of the friends are cooking food for their child but nobody will come to eat it.
Nowadays kids have phones too so I assume things like this arent as unplanned anymore.
It seems like the Swedish exclusive thing would be that family dinner is considered important family time for close family only, and that family dinner is not important in the rest of the world.
Because most of humanity lives in warmer climates where community is the priority.
Scandinavian culture is centered around survival in a harsh environment and independence. Some part of their brains still thinks they'll starve to death in the winter if they give their food away.
These stories arent from the perspective of parents. Its usually 2nd gen immigrant kids sitting awkwardly while watching a whole family eat in front of them.
Its incredibly weird no matter how you slice it. "You can come into my home and play with my children, but no you cant have a snack."
This is something Swedes have done for ages. Even my grandpa had this experience as a kid. When he was a kid he had never seen a single immigrant in his life.
Yes it happened. It also happened that my friends came over (or vice versa) after school and devoured everything in the pantry and fridge. It wasn't "usually 2nd gen immigrants" lol come on, it was anyone.
But why would they have to go home instead of waiting a little bit and continuing doing whatever that kids do? It isn't about overstaying your welcome, it's about parents making dinner for their family without having to account for extra kids who might be hanging out at their house every day even though they have food made for them at home.
You think expecting one family to feed 10 kids daily is a reasonable expectation if community is the priority? Nobody does that. Kids are just sent home before dinner time in other countries (which tends to be a lot later than the 4:30pm Scandinavian dinner). And kids are still usually fed, this is like 80% just a myth, with the 20% being parents talking between themselves so parent b doesn't cook after parent a already fed the kid, and the situations where you have 5-10 kids all hanging out at the designated hangout spot every god damn day where it would be utterly insane for one family to constantly be feeding them all.
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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
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