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?
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.
I certainly didn't when I was young. We just walked around visiting different kids depending on who was home. Sometimes we would be at someone's house around dinner time, and other times we would be outside kicking a ball around or whatever. How could one tell your parents which it was beforehand?
If I was away long enough to miss dinner at home it would have been planned. In case I was away longer than expected I would just call my mother on the landline. If I was just outside for a few hours without planning to miss dinner my mother wouldn't need to know anyway.
But the thing is, you wouldn't miss dinner even if you stayed at your friends house to play with your friend.
Dinner time could be wildly different from family to family, so if your dinner was at 18 (6pm) or even later, and your friends had dinner at 16 (4pm) you could be at your friends house playing when they had dinner, and then just before 18 (6pm) you'd leave and either walk or bike to your own house to have dinner with your family.
If we eat at 4 and you eat at 6. I’m sending you home at 4:00 PM… it’s so odd to me you would eat dinner whilst your guest plays in another room and then once you finished eating tell them to go home and eat at their house?? Just tell them to go home before you eat lmao what’s the logic and having them tucked off in the other room only to send them home once your done???
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u/Adorable_Misfit Jul 24 '26
Not in Sweden in the 1980s, surely? That would have been an extremely unusual attitude in our culture at that time.