Writings by me

You may have noticed that one of my pastimes is criticising how we parent in the UK. You may remember that I’ve gone as far as saying that the prevalence of PND in the UK can be linked at least in part to this environment. Its prevalence is no surprise in a society that treats its parents the way it does.

One way to feel instantly better about your parenting techniques is to look outside of our Western bubble, at other cultures. From pregnancy to raising teens, you can practically guarantee that our way of doing things is not the only way and in many ways, completely inferior. So the next time you feel inadequate as a parent, consider the following:

1. Are you putting yourself under intolerable pressure to avoid letting your child experience disappointment or negative emotions? Look no further than the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia whose entire parenting experience revolves around ensuring the resilience and self-reliance of their children in the face of the immense challenges they experience living in the Arctic. For them this means not protecting their children from failure, using light-hearted teasing to teach lessons and allowing children autonomy over decisions and to allow them to experience the consequences if their decision ends badly 
2. Stop feeling guilty that they are in full-time childcare, or staying with your parents again, or in fact with anyone other than you. Sharing the childrearing is a part of parenting in so many other cultures. Our perceived need to struggle alone is almost laughable. In fact, if you look back to when our grandparents were raising kids, leaving your children with the neighbour while you ran an errand was the norm.
3. Going back to work after maternity leave is hard enough. Agonising over the decision of when, where the child will go, what hours you’ll do, or whether to go back at all makes it all so much harder. Expressing this to a French friend resulted in a raised eyebrow and much urging to put the guilt to one side; in France, it is expected that mothers return to work, and women are enabled to make this happen via state-subsidised childcare (imagine!).
4. Another reason to be really jealous of the Danish (aside from Sandi Toksvig), is that as well as being the happiest place in the world, the Danish way of parenting embodies the above and more. The next time you feel guilty for making your child do chores, tell yourself you are teaching them how to be an adult. Next time you leave them alone to do an activity, tell yourself you’re teaching them independence. The Danish do this, and the happiness stats say it all.
5. In my last Lemon-Aid I talked about quality time with the kids. Yet in the UK there is a tendency to judge the quality of quality time. Another way the Sami people have nailed it is in the ways they spend time with their families. Quality time is spent doing simple, normal things like household chores or going for a walk to forage. If I was to choose anything from this list to steal, it would be this one. It’s lovely to go out for the day and spend quality time with the kids doing fun, adventurous things that also develop them. It is equally lovely to share the tidying while chatting or sitting together to watch repeats of Disney films in companionable silence. 

I suspect the above barely scratches the surface of the topic of ‘parenting-in-other-cultures’. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side either. But the point is, parenting is yours, you can craft it and mould it to suit you. The variations above prove there is more than one way to do this parenting thing.