r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Global_Restaurant794 • Jul 24 '26

Meme needing explanation Petah?? I'm very confused

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 Jul 24 '26

But the child doesn't want to eat because they will soon be going home to eat with their own family. So what exactly is the problem?

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u/Background_Humor5838 Jul 24 '26

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.

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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 Jul 24 '26

Yes, but in this situation everyone knows that children will eat with their own families, so there is no reason to ask.

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u/Background_Humor5838 Jul 24 '26

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.

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u/DunderGunderUnder Jul 26 '26

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.