Second take on Danish parenting

Growing up and moving out

Portraying danish parenting in a way I did in the last post would be hugely unfair to Danes. They do love their children and take good care of them, even if it may sound harsh when you present it in a way I did. Every aspect of parenting that I mentioned has it's merit. I think that the best one is that the danish cultural default is to insist on their children moving out when they come of age. No matter that it looks harsh, especially if you take into consideration that children are asked to move out while still going to high school. With that single act they are doing them a huge favor in the long run. Kids become independent very fast. While it is a huge shock at the start and it is not easy, with this single act children will be fast-tracked into self-sufficiency. Couple of years ago I even read that, at the start, this custom severely reduces the living standard of children but within 5 years they surpass the living standard of their parents. So, at the age of 23 they are leading a better lives then they did while living with their parents!

Just as a point of comparison. A lot of children in Croatia move out of their parents in their late 20's, some even stay until their 30's. But, it shouldn't be forgotten that Denmark has a very strong labor market, full employment and amazing paychecks. If the same custom was practiced in Croatia, children would just end up on the streets and that is something Danes would never do to their children. I even asked this a couple of mine Danish friends. Would they ask their children to move out if they knew that kids couldn't find jobs and be self-sufficient and they gave me a firm no.

Curling parenting

Unfortunately, that Danish custom is slowly losing ground. Just like the rest of the world, Denmark is starting to have problems with too permissive parenting that results in incompetent young adults. Danes are calling it curling parenting. The analogy to curling is that parents sweep away the problems which their children are facing in the same way sweepers, clear the ice in curling in the stones path so it can travel further. That way, children grow up totally incompetent with facing the challenges the life presents. If family is a bit better of, the child will still move out but the parents will be financing it's life, so no life lesions will be learned. Allegedly some parents even go to their children's job interviews. The problem that I see is caused by the heavy Danish social state.

 

One problem that is present in all Scandinavian countries is that they are being too protective of their citizens, to the point that they are preventing them in making bad life choices. Don't get me wrong, that in itself is a good cause, but the consequences are not. The problem is that it is almost impossible for Danish citizens to fail. No matter what stupidity in life they do, what mistake they make, no matter the magnitude of it, the state of Denmark will always catch them. The risk of failure is reduced so drastically that there are no consequences and consequences are necessary for learning. If you don't know what the hardship is, how are you capable of valuing the plenty that you live in?

And people do rely on it. People in Denmark expect, even demand that the state solves some of their problems? Even some of the family problems, but that is the topic for another post. What happened to taking the responsibility for your own life? Calling the shots and living with consequences?

I love the Danish social state, I think it is great, but at some points I also think it is going a bit too far. It is being too protective.

Growing up in Denmark

If one would want, one could make Danes look like a horrible parents. (DISCLAIMER: this is a composite of different educational practices of parents in Denmark I have come across separately. I do not think that Danish parents are bad, but I do find it amusing when you compile it this way that they can sound so.)

As I wrote last week, very shortly after children are born, they are being tucked away at the baby-strawlers and put outside in the cold and rain to sleep at least once per day. Kindergartens have a whole baby parking installations outside where children are put to sleep.

Six to nine months after childbirth, mothers go back to the working market and children are left full time in daycare institutions. Even Danes acknowledge that because children are taken care of by professionals a lot, parents often miss on their children's important development steps like when they start to crawl, walk, talk etc.

From the age of two, danish children are starting to get education in kindergartens. First through play,but by the age of six or seven children are expected to sit and pay attention to their teachers for 45 minutes straight. If we take into consideration that attention span of an average adult is 15 minutes, I guess you can imagine that this is a very demanding task for children. But I have to be fair and say that this is a problem of education in general. If children fail at this they will be diagnosed with ADHD and treated for it. Couple of pedagogues I talked to told me that ADHD diagnosis is given out way too lightly in Denmark and that a number of children who actually have ADHD is low.

As children continue to develop, they should feel super lucky if their teeth and jaw develop as they should. If they don't, they will get external braces and they will walk around looking as space-man. With that, every shred of self-confidence they may have developed is completely ruined.

When they turn 13 they join the labor market and ofc they are being exploited. When children in Denmark start to work, they are being paid only half of what adults would be earning for the same position. 

When puberty kicks in and hormones start raging, when kids start to mature and ask questions about life, meaning, purpose and all other kinds of philosophical questions, their parents point them to the psychologists. Why? Because there is only so much personal problems with which parents can't be bothered, for everything else there are professionals who are there to help children to grow up. Did I say problems? Sorry, I meant to say normal part of development. Yes, for normal part of development, children in Denmark are sent to the psychologists.

Hmm... but maybe they do need professional help, after all from 13 to 18 they are expected to develop working habits and go to school and excel at both because in Denmark you can't be less then perfect. At the same time they are constantly being reminded that they are nothing special, that they shouldn't stand out, that is the way of the Jante Law that is deeply ingrained in Danish culture. And as an icing on the cake children are supposed to take their emotions and bury them deep down and never show them, because that is also deeply ingrained in Danish culture. All of that is expected from them while nothing in life makes sense and hormones are raging. And just at the moment they got the hang of their emotions, answered some of the questions, finished school, their loving parents thank them for cooperation and ditch them out of the apartment because that is expected when you turn 18. 

Of course they can visit from time to time, but only if announced a month in advance. After all, parents have their lives as well.

Don't you just wanna be a kid growing up in Denmark?

Freezer baby parking

This time I will write about what I consider the most unusual Danish tradition I have seen, parking babies out in the cold.

I moved to Denmark at the end of February. Temperatures were hovering around 0 degrees for the next three weeks with a more or less constant drizzle, so weather was far from ideal. With that kind of weather, one day I am coming home from work and I see 5 or six baby-strawlers parked at the courtyard of the building where I lived in Copenhagen. I was totally out of myself! I even saw a mom coming out with a baby-strawler, parks it outside and casually goes back up to her apartment. So she just left her baby outside in the cold and rain!

When I entered the apartment I described the horror that I just witnessed but Al'Shadar was completely un-phased by it. She just shrugged it of and said: "What of it? We do it constantly and it is healthy for the babies to sleep out in the cold." I must say that at first I took it as something completely mental. Throughout march, Copenhagen was littered with babies sleeping out in the cold.

I became curious about the custom and was asking people what is that all about. I was trying to figure out why are they doing it, for how long in the year are they doing it, how and where did the custom start. From Danes I got the first part and second part of the answer. It is consider that it is healthy for children to sleep out in the cold, they also managed to convinced me that it is quite safe. Babies are tucked in good and they are not freezing, on the contrary, parents often overdress them, they are under constant surveillance with the help of the baby monitor and parents instantly reacts when the baby starts crying. Also, babies sleep out in the cold for as long the temperatures outside are lower then the temperatures indoors and that is the case for at least 6 months in a year, from October to March.

But nobody could tell me how and when did this unusual custom start. Also, the claims that it is healthy for the children was always only on the level of common knowledge and as something that everybody does and knows. When I said that in Croatia I could imagine social services going out if they found out you are doing it, Danes were quite surprised. Since I couldn't get an answer I had to look it up.

The custom started on Iceland in early 20th century during a tuberculosis epidemic. Pedagog David Thorsteinsson in 1926. suggested that putting healthy children out in the baby-strawlers could be a good way of isolating them from the sick children so they don't get infected. From there the custom spread to all Scandinavian countries. Today it is a common practice among parents it is even considered as a bullet-proof evidence of good parenting. 

 

But still is it healthy for real? As it turns out it actually is. In 1990 a study was conducted by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. The study showed that children that spent six to nine hours outside per week were significantly less sick when compared to children that spent between one and five hours outside per week. Finnish scientist Marjo Tourula did a study on infants sleeping outdoors and she realized that children are sleeping significantly longer when sleeping in the cold compared to when they are sleeping on room temperatures.

So to conclude, weirdish custom that could terrify my Croatian relatives if I were to practice it is actually very healthy and beneficial to children. 

 

So please, if you visit Denmark or any other Scandinavian country and see baby parking on the streets at sub-zero temperatures please compose yourself and don't call the social services, you are witnessing a very normal Danish custom.

Work, work

Arbejde, arbejde (work, work) are the words you hear far too often when talking to Danes. Arbejde means work and work is an integral part of Danish identity, without it Danes wouldn't be what they are. It pops out in every conversation, it is in every corner of every street, it is a part of family life, it is ever-present and unavoidable... it is work. What's up with Danes and work and why do they find it so important?

They have a worker bee hive mind mentality. They say that if they work hard they will produce enough value and that will be good for everyone. Basically they think that with hard work, value is produced that can go back to their social state and their social state will provide to those in need. So hard work is the thing that makes Danish social state, that provides the safety net, run around and Danes want and like their social state. This is where the first paradox in Danish culture arises - and they have a number of them. Their amazing social state can run around only if Danes continue working hard and if they use it only in circumstances when it is simply unavoidable: when they loose a job or for some reason they are unable to work. But at the same time, ideally and if possible, services of the social state should never be used.

Also, working market in Denmark is very flexible. It is very flexible because on the one hand the demand for workers is huge and on the other hand there is a safety net I have been mentioning that kicks in when people lose jobs, quit jobs or are not able to work, because of all that taken together people are not afraid to change jobs. That also makes staying in one workplace for life not that common, at the same time job hopping is looked down upon. So, changing jobs is considered ok, as long as that doesn't happen too often.

Danes start working when they are 13. Not a lot of course, couple of hours per week, on a bit lower wage because in those years people will not be put in positions that require a lot of responsibility. By 18 they developed their working habits, they did a number of starter jobs and at that time the default Danish family expects that their kid should, find their own place to live and go. 

One good consequence of this is that there is no jobs that are looked down upon. It isn't shameful to work as a garbage man, cleaner, delivery man etc. The first thing that gets you respect in Denmark is that you are working. It is always more important to earn your own money, be independent, pull your own weight and contribute to society in general then to be picky with jobs and mooch from the social state and your family. Social state is there only in case of emergency and it is not to be used lightly.

And hard work pays of!

In Denmark, connections will not get you very far, not compared to hard work and skill. Hard work also pays of at a much more fundamental level. Political consensus in Denmark is that the lowest salary should be so high that you can make your own living. You wouldn't get rich from it but you could make your life run around without help from others. Something completely unimaginable from where I come from. That hard work pays of is seen everywhere in Denmark. It is something for one of the following blog posts.