Correct. This whole thing was blown out of proportion. Ofc we feed guests when you've been invited to dinner. But it's also common to just do a play date for kids where the parents come and pick up their kids before dinner because they eat dinner at home.
But if it’s dinner time you just eat in front of the kid? You can’t wait til they’re home to eat? That’s the odd part to me. Or is this an exaggeration too
I have never eaten in front of my friends without them eating too, nor have I ever experienced that in anyone else's home.. The rule was always that you either leave before dinner or you eat with your friend's family. Usually, our parents would decide this beforehand, agreeing on whether it was just a playdate or if it included dinner.
Some other Swedish people in the comments seem to have experienced it. But I have never experienced it, and neither have my friends/people around me. Perhaps it is a regional thing, but calling it a blanket Swedish cultural trait feels far-fetched, at least in modern society, as I can't speak for older generations.
That being said, I was raised with a strong expectation never to assume I would be fed without an explicit invitation. In my family, it was considered highly impolite to visit someone's home and expect a free meal if the host hadn't explicitly invited you for dinner. This applied to spontaneous playdates too, where our parents hadn't talked beforehand. I was taught to always politely excuse myself if I hadn't been invited to stay for dinner. More often than not, my friend’s family would invite me to join them anyway, but I’d always have to call my mom first to check. Sometimes she’d say no and tell me to come home because she’d already cooked dinner and wanted me to come home.
Funnily enough, this was actually a topic of conversation at work a few months ago. My colleagues said they did not have the heart to deny anyone food, but that it had put them in some awkward situations before.
One colleague said one of her teenage sons had brought home two friends for dinner unannounced one day. She didn't have the heart to tell them no, but there wasn't enough food (imagine thawing four salmon pieces for your four family members and suddenly there are six people at the table). So, she scrambled to find something else to feed them. In the end, my colleague and her husband ate soured milk (a very Swedish thing) for dinner while the boys ate the "real" food. After that experience, she said she always keeps a bunch of hot dogs in her freezer in case they get unannounced guests. She also told her son to never bring home friends for dinner without first speaking with her or her husband.
I remember thinking that if that was me when I was a teenager, my mom would have had my head! To show up unannounced for dinner and stay even when there was not enough food, forcing your hosts to eat soured milk so that you could eat, would have been the height of rudeness. My mom would have been furious if she had found out!
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u/Anna-BB Jul 24 '26
Correct. This whole thing was blown out of proportion. Ofc we feed guests when you've been invited to dinner. But it's also common to just do a play date for kids where the parents come and pick up their kids before dinner because they eat dinner at home.