I'm loving this series


I've been fascinated by this series on the differences in parenting 
around the world.

The way I understand it, these were all written by Americans who 
have lived in these countries long enough to have opinions and 
notice the differences between there and here.

So far they have featured 11, and still coming out with more. Press 
the links to read the lists of surprising ways of parenting in each 
culture. (I wonder what other countries find surprising about us!)


Germany…Instead of teaching kids to share, they are taught to take the toy back or fight. 
Must make for lovely adult relationships later on.

Norway….where all kids go to bed at 7pm

Japan…where kids go school year round with no summer break.

China….Diaper free culture (you read that right, unfortunately)

Congo…if you don't pay the hospital after birth they lockdown and won't let you out

England….this was the most boring one...nothing stood out to me

Abu Dhabi...no car seat laws and babies are believed to be safest in Mom's arms.

India…where it's against the law to find out baby's gender before birth

Northern Ireland…you don't have to leave home for Dr visits

Denmark…Babies take their naps outside, alone.

Australia…Many put their babies into government subsidized "sleep training camps" at 6-7 
months old (really? and why is their government involved in this??)


This series is from the blog Cup of Jo,
but I'm not sure she has a schedule of exactly when she will post the next ones.



7 comments:

Rebecca said...

Wow these are really weird! I have to disagree with the Germany one. We lived there and my kids played with German kids and they were not that way. Maybe just "some" Germans are this way? As for the sleep camps......hum I know of some desperate parents who might give that one a try!

McKenna Heasley said...

I loved this! I have read this blog before and enjoyed it. Every one of these things surprised me! (Except England's of course)

Anonymous said...

Loved looking through these. I wish there was more detail. So fascinating. I do know that I was left to sleep outside in my baby buggy, and I was raised in LA! That was in 1949, and I think that was a fairly common practice then. Sleep training camps? That creeps me out.
darlene

Grandma Honey said...

Darlene….If you press the link of each country it will give more detail….or did you mean you wanted even more than that? Creeps me out too about the sleep camps. Even though the mom goes with the baby it's connected to a hospital and a nurse is in charge. When did home life become so clinical?

Anonymous said...

MORE detail.
When I was born, my mother stayed in the maternity home for 2 WEEKS after my perfectly natural birth. Then a nurse came to our house every day to help my mom take care of me for another month! Can you believe it? She taught my mom to let me sleep outside for naps, to "sun" me, to feed me pureed foods at one week old, to make this awful homemade formula with canned evaporated milk, Karo syrup, and I don't know what else, to feed me every 4 hours and let me cry if I woke before then. Sounds like sleep camp, doesn't it? No wonder the idea of "sleep camps" creeps me out! I haven't gotten over it! When I think of my sweet mom, I can hardly imagine her letting me cry and cry. She had SUCH a soft heart. But, that was the child-raising practice of the day, and she was just following the orders. And I turned out ok. (Though I've always had trouble with my digestion.... too much canned milk and corn syrup?)
Children are so resilient. That's what I kept thinking when I was reading about the various methods of raising children throughout the world. The children just adapt to whatever their culture asks of them. And most of them survive.
darlene

Karen Mortensen said...

sounds interesting.

Grandma Honey said...

My mom said she was in the hospital a long time too when she had her first baby in 1952. I think she said 10 days! What was she doing in there all of that time! By the time I came along procedures had changed and I think we were just there a couple days.

Your poor Mom…it WAS probably really hard on her but most likely she was convinced it was a tough love kind of thing. That she HAD to follow all those schedules to be a really good Mom.

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