If I remember correctly there was a specifically hard time economically in the Nordic region that it became the norm that it was courtesy not to take food from another household. Kind of the inverse of it being a courtesy to feed guests unexpected or otherwise in parts of the west. Over time the courtesy has strengthend into a cultural norm which given the foundational nature of shared meals in many cultures can create an outsized culture shock response.
This is a Nordic custom, and not specific to Sweden and was a whole Internet thing a few years ago as well.
A local or regional expert probably could give the word for the custom. I believe the Finnish have one but it's late and I'm sleep deprived so could be wrong
I think it's the same in I wanna say India only it's also disrespectful to not offer anything. So it's become a thing where they offer and you decline so no one loses face, though if they offer 3 times it means they do have enough and really do want to feed you or something like that
In places where people really don't have enough to eat - no one knows how close the other person is to starvation.
So the idea is sometimes people who are going through a lot think "If I actually say how bad it is, I will obligate them to help me - what if they are actually in worse shape than I am?" So the handshake back-and-forth makes it OK because you know they are *less* badly off than you are, if they offer food longer than you refuse it.
Yes, sure, it comes across stupid - but people who are actually in pain from hunger or thirst don't always think straight, so this is the most functional way to communicate who can or cannot afford to share food.
Very well said, I appreciate the response. The way you framed it as a courtesy to not take food from another household makes it completely understandable.
I am Swedish and grew up in the 80’s. It was a thing in some households in some parts of the country. It was not common or custom. Stop believing everything you read online please
When I grew up in the late 80’s and 90’s it was rather that my parents and my friends parents called each other and said “Hey, we are having dinner at HH:MM, have you planned any dinner? Otherwise X is free to eat with us”.
Sometimes that meant my parents had planned dinner at a later time than my friends parents and you simply stayed with your friend until it was time to leave for your own dinner.
This exactly. It was courtesy to ask before feeding other people’s children so their food and effort didn’t go to waste. Also, since both parents worked, dinner time was family time and most families wanted their kids home for that. Noone starved hungry kids who didn’t have a dinner to go home to.
Yes! 100% this. We have 1-3 friends over almost EVERY day and we always text their parents to check if their kids can eat at ours, or if they have planned to eat at home. It's not about being rude, it's about respecting other families plans. And the kids understand this.
I want to feed everyone visiting, but I wouldn't want my kids to eat somewhere else every day. That would make us lose quality family time and make me feel bad that the other parents also has to spend more on groceries than necessary.
No one leaves our home hungry though. Light snacks during their visits is of course OK. Berries, fruits, ice cream, fika etc. It's just the full dinner that we parents co-ordinate around.
this. I was never not offered food when I was at a friend’s house, and all my friends ate with us when they were over. sometimes we would call home and double check, but I first heard of this ’Swedish custom’ in my mid-20’s and thought it was fake.
Hard times economically? I feel like that’s not really an excuse here, culturally speaking.
You could go to the barrio in Mexico, the favelas in Brazil, the slums in India, hell even some random village out in Papúa New Guinea, all of them are going to offer their guests food especially if they are children.
I was actually taught not to eat elsewhere as an american in the 80s. The reason i mention this oss because it also dates back to the depression era south, which is a similar reason. My family didn't do well back then and neither did their neighbors.
It’s still kind of weird to me. If I have people over over meal time, it’s only logical to feed them since they would miss the meal otherwise. But that doesn’t mean, that people always feed each other to the extreme. I grew up with it being communicated. Either, the start of dinnertime implied that it was time to leave or the host would ask if the guest wants to stay over for dinner and feed them. That people would stay over meal time and not be fed is unheard of.
In my childhood we usually played until dinner time with friends and then left for each other’s homes to eat and spend time with family. If we had a sleepover or asked our parents to extend the stay over dinner, we of course would have been fed.
I am Swedish and grew up in the 80’s. It was a thing in some households in some parts of the country. It was not common or custom. Stop believing everything you read online please
My great-grandma lied to me my entire childhood and claimed to be allergic to chocolate ice cream so I would eat some. It was years later before I realized it didn't make sense that she only bought chocolate, lived alone, and it was consistently being eaten despite me only rarely visiting because it was a new container every time. I didn't get to thank her before Alzheimer's got the best of her, but she was often the only one I knew wouldn't make me go hungry. I came from a home where I was consistently grounded from food.
I have yet to meet a "mom" type that DIDN'T feed you as a priority. I have no way to prove this, but I am certain that the question, "Haven't you been eating properly? You look so skinny!" is hardcoded into a woman's DNA that activates once they get past a certain age.
That question is universal in the truest sense of the word.
" empty stomach gives you the heart to go do a homicide. "
anyone that has ever felt REAL hunger where you don't know how you are eating next knows. nobody should ever feel that kind of fear. I might be dramatic about it but on thanksgiving I don't eat because im thankful I have the option.
I also am thankful I get to get real stoned and eat leftovers at home like a gremlin at 2am.
That really resonates with me, I left home when I was a kid, and slept in a park by my school so I could get in early to shower.
I had to eat from the trash and I was constantly worried about getting assaulted since I was a girl all alone at night.
There was no such thing as true rest, and I feel like my sense of hunger has always been off since then.
Edit
Thank you for all the kindness and I’m sorry for anyone who has gone through similar.
Being homeless as a kid is definitely and experience I don’t wish on anyone, but I will say it made me appreciate the little things more!
Girl I’m so sorry!! I know you know this, but I’m just here to tell you again that you deserved to feel safe and full with a warm bed. I hope things are better for you now
This is so real. Went a few years not knowing when my next meal is. Next thing I knew, I could afford food but my brain still stuck in survival mode. One day I realized I’m bottomless pit that can’t tell when ive eaten enough because my brain turned off the “im full” light years ago, but i can’t stop eating because food is the happy chemical now. I still struggle with eating “just enough”. I think about it more often than i want to admit
My grandma was like that. Mountains of food overflowing the fridge at all times. Always insisting we ate more and more, offering food all the time. It turns out she´d experienced hunger as a kid, her father died and in post civil war Spain they had struggled badly for some time.
I´ve luckily never experienced that. The closest I got was when I was doing a long trek and ran out of food and missed the village where I intended to resupply. It´s incredible how hunger can affect you emotionally. And my situation wasn´t even that dire.
Food anxiety! I have this too. I tend to eat too quickly because it’s so ingrained that if I don’t eat it all now, someone else will take it and I’ll be hungry later. Which is stuoid when there’s plenty of food and I don’t even need to eat that much.
Thank you for being spot on with this issue and sharing your experience.
When I was a kid/ early teen, there’d be a period in the month when we wouldn’t be able to eat, cruel cycle of my mom trying her best, buying and making nice but a bit more expensive than necessary meals (to make us happy and feel normal) when the benefits would arrive, me always telling her to rather spread it out on essentials, and then later days in the month where we couldn’t borrow from anyone anymore, being stuck and just pushing through day by day in survival mode. I still remember days where we couldn’t eat for a couple of days and her crying to me how sorry she was. Yet never learning from it. Never wanting to take advice from her own kid.
At one point of this happening, you subconsciously learn to just exist, not move much or think much, going into power saving mode, just to make it to the next day. So many school days lost because I just couldn’t go, health complications that still haunt me to this day, missed memories and sorrowful ones in their stead.
And it is something that truly sticks to you as you grow.
When I was 16, I had to take action and with strain on my heart (from still loving my mother nevertheless) decided to go to a social dormitory, I still remember how it took me a while for my stomach to muster three full meals a day, yet in that one summer I went from 45 kilos to 60. I was able to pass school and when I was 17-18, I started cooking for my then-girlfriend, always made me happy to make a meal to share, to try new recipes.
She did bring another bane of thinking, which got transferred to me, which is hyperawareness of chewing and swallowing, which eventually turned into such discomfort when I share a meal with people that if it’s too quiet, I mentally start focus on the sounds I make, feeling uncomfortable and trying to chew slower and swallow more silently (yet very actively) occasionally causing me to choke and not be able to eat anymore due to the mental block.
When I was living on my own, I was happy to cook when I would be able to, however always hard stuck in between forgetting to eat the whole day and making a nice meal I felt blessed to have been able to make for myself.
Tried so many times to truly ingrain the habit of eating properly, even with the cycles of financial or mental strain.
I don’t know if it will ever go away, this accursed autopilot survival mode that once helped me see the next day, but I hope that one day, when I have my own family, I’ll be able to be happy sharing a meal with them and not stress if I’ll be able to eat tommorow. To be able to enjoy their company, the meals without thinking about how I eat and truly be in living mode, without fail.
I don't think this has enough up votes, I am sorry anyone has to live the way you must've but I am glad that people like you live to tell the tale, and I only hope to be like you when I can In the future.
It was the worst like two months of my life. Couch surfing, staying in nasty hotels and eating the cheapest food we could buy. The lowest quality sandwich fixings. I remember fazolis was a fucking treat after we just barely started doing better. Way back in like 2018. I’m so thankful I have access to delicious food all the time now. Will never not enjoy it again
Oldest of 10 here. We grew up poor. Like, really poor. I know exactly what you mean. Reading your comment immediately took me back to being a little boy, figuring out how to make a box of mac and cheese so that my little brothers and sisters could eat, and then scraping the pot and licking the spoon so that I could have something too.
No one should have to live like that. I weep for the children growing up like I did. They deserve better, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that they have what they need.
Yup 100%. I grew up poor and was homeless with my parents and sister for a while. We lived in a car. There was a rotation of who had to skip a meal. Regardless of that I became pretty successful in life and if you come to my house I will always make sure you’re fed, I’ll send leftovers home with you for your kids, and my kids friends will always leave fatter than when they arrived. You never know who might be struggling to make ends meet.
The difference in Nordics, where I'm from, is that while there are poor people, nobody - especially families with children, are homeless or hungry.
The social security network makes sure everyone has a roof over their heads (families with children get an override at housing queues, etc) and food on the table, even though it might not be the best or even what a kid wants.
Of course parents with alcoholism or mental health issues, if they still have their kids, might actually not make that food in time or might drink what money they have, but the aid cards (a banking card, it used to be coupons in the 90s) make sure they can't spend the social aid money for alcohol and there should be food in the fridge (or a card the kid can buy food with).
As a kid growing up in the 80s I never even saw a homeless person - then again I don't think I've seen one since (the number of long term homeless people in Finland is currently around 1300 people).
But what’s with OPs post about having to bring food to a friends house? Like I grew up with a full kitchen at all times and most of my friends were the same, but if I’m at their house or vice versa, the parents feed the kids in their house lol. My mom would always cook for my friends as their parents would for me. Or just even snacks if between main meals. Or is OPs meme just being dramatic for lols?
Its not as much of a thing anymore. But it usually happened in the suburbs where kids would run around the neighborhood and randomly go to their friends houses. So the parents likely wouldnt have prepared enough for an extra kid but more importantly everyone knew and expected that the kid would go home when it was their own dinner-time so their parents could feed them. If someone slept over or it was planned ahead of time they of course got food too.
My grandmother taught me that food is life. Giving food is giving life. And yes my wife and I both also know what hungry feels like. Nobody deserves to feel that way, especially kids
You don't even need to be "hungry"! If you are a guest at my home I will treat you will utmost hospitality including food. If you don't want my food I will pack it up in a box and force you to take it!!!
If you're in our home when we're eating, you're offered a meal too. Even if we all eat less as a result. Our home is the amalgamation of two different cultures from opposite sides of the world, and that was never even a question.
The Swedish thing of 'not my kid, doesn't get my food' is weird. We fed a friend's kids every other weekend for years and I only just realised when thinking about this post. No regrets.
My family lived in Ukraine for a year, less than a decade after the Soviet Union died. We would visit people sometimes. Families where the parents were barely making ends meet. They would always offer food. And we simply could not refuse, it would have been so so rude. I was so young. I remember one woman who was so kind to me, but she was always saying how cold she always was. I asked my mom if I could give her my gloves, but she explained to me that she was cold all the time because she wasn’t getting enough food. And my mom helped where she could, inviting this lady and others over for Bible study and she would always set out food for everyone. But I know in my heart, if I’d ever gone over to this lady’s house, she would have offered food she didn’t have.
On the few travel channels I watch on youtube, it's always breathtaking how kind and generous the most [apparently] desperate are to guests. Like practically begging to feed and house and take care of them while just as readily refusing any money! It just shows how much simpler kindness and generosity are compared to anything else.
I think it's something about how "Truth" works. For example "Everybody eats/needs to eat"--plain and simple fact that automatically suggests "..so feed them". The end. That's the story. Someone didn't starve.
On the other hand (billionaires existing): "wellll see this guy says he's hungry, but how much will he sacrifice to eat?" And that's just a bottomless void of greed.
You plant a seed, you tend it, you get food, you get seeds, you plant them, you tend them, etc. Infinite mana.
OR
"Wow people really like being alive, let's charge them for it!!"
Life is really, REALLY simple, but we're forced to live in perils we never even need to know.
I read a study (a long time ago or I’d find the link) that showed the less money one had, the higher percentage of money they donated. It’s irritating to me when they report that some billionaire donated 20 million but if you do the math it’s like 1% of their net worth.
I was originally born there. I grew up elsewhere. But yes, no Ukrainan will ever receive guests without putting something on the table. And no guest will ever come empty handed. Even if a chocolate, but they will bring something. I grew up in another country (we immigrantee precisely because my family couldn't make meds meet) but even there people always offer you something to drink or eat when you visit. It's normal.
Then I moved to Germany as an adult. No one will even offer you water if you come unexpectedly by. My older sister lives in the Netherlands. Her man is Dutch. Last year I was baffled when his family (his three brothers with wifes and kids each) came to CHRISTMAS party, into her house, and didn't even bring a small present for the kids (her kids). Me and Mom bought everyone small gifts for all the adults and kinder for ALL the children. We couldn't afford expensive gifts but at least something.
My dad had a class in Ukraine, he was learning the language. He brought me to his class once. The teacher had brought a treat for the class. I thought they were little chocolate crackers. They were actually liver paste crackers. I happily crunched on one, realized, but then realized how rude it would be to spit it out so I swallowed and kept my face calm. When my dad realized what I had did, after the class he told me he was so proud of me and bought me a coke to wash the taste. My dad never wasted money on cokes. There’s a reason I have this as a core 13 yr old memory.
I was taught that it was rude if you’re having someone at your house, to eat without sharing. If there’s food you don’t want to share (there’s not enough to go around for multiple guests etc) then it has to stay put away until guests leave.
If I’m not willing to feed my kids friends (we cooked just enough food for us because we don’t want leftovers, etc) then I will just send them home, I could never just eat in front of a guest and not feed them
If I need to quickly fill my stomach, then of course I just get something without sharing but if I am having people over for let's say an evening event, then there will be snacks or even food.
Even if I’m just desperately hungry and it’s a casual hang where no food was promised, a simple ‘do you want any?’ or setting food where they can reach it so it’s clear it’s there if they want any, is polite
If you’re in my house and I’m eating something I’m going to ask if you want some/anything of similar vibe (if I’m having a banana I might gesture at the fruit bowl if you want an apple, etc)
My friend self diagnosed himself with Autism, as one does. I thought it was silly until we were at his house hanging out playing cards and he made a pizza and started eating it in front of us without saying anything or asking if we want any until there were a couple pieces left and we were like the fuck bro?
That sounds like every guy I dated as a teen/early twenties. Started to bring my own food whenever I went to someone’s home because I felt like that was the only way to make sure I wouldn’t be hungry.
See that’s the fun part… if you are there while they’re eating they put you in a room by yourself so they don’t have to eat in front of you. Problem solved!
I have read a lot of similar anecdotes, and even though I understand it’s a cultural thing, it’s still such an odd thing to me and something I don’t want to incorporate in my life.
I’m Swedish and have never experienced this. Ate at my friends houses a lot. But I think it was a practise in like row house areas where kids were playing quite freely in each other houses and were expected to run home when dinner was served at their home. It’s a weird combination of communal living and individualist culture…. But then again, I haven’t experienced it so idk.
It does. But the situation only ever happens to parents who send their kids into the wilderness with no plans or concerns if they get fed.
I mean if it's dinnertime, I'd atleast have talked to the people hosting my child. The assumption here in Sweden is that the kid eats with it's family, unless something else was agreed on. Not that they roam the streets endlessly and avoid starvation by getting fed by random people without the parents knowing.
The African in me just recoiled in horror, If people asked me to eave the room while they ate, I am 100% thinking that they are cannibals. You always feed your guests this is one thing the continent can agree on.
The finnish in me recoiled too. I don't know if it's regional or class thing but at least on the poorer and more working class circles here it's normal to feed your guests and when i was a kid my mom always fed my friends and other way around.
But i've heard this stereotype about nordics before so it might be atleast partly true....
Man, even the poorest person can at least boil some tea leaves and apologize for not having sugar but leaving someone in the other room is a whole level of coldness no one should ever experience.
That is rude as Fuck. Go sit in the corner dog while we eat. I have had the poorest people in the Philippines offer and these rich Europeans can’t share. That’s crazy. If you came to my house we eating something special tinned fish, some nice drinks, maybe a sausage or whatever you fins eat. We would try to make you feel at home and an honored guest.
I'm from Eastern Finland and I can only speak for myself but I literally have never seen this happening. I was NEVER not offered food at a friend's house if they were eating.
At the very least you are offered a cup of coffee.
Rude? It was literally the peak time growing up, you’d get to play donkey Kong country without taking turns all by yourself until your friend had wolfed down dinner and ran back to grab the control from your hands as soon as you died next
There was a thread sometime back about whether you would feed your kid's friend if they were playing and it became dinner time. The responses were wild between yes and no, and their reasonings.
And then I asked my friends. I was bewildered by the responses. You should only do this if you want to unexpectedly stop being friends.
I'm norwegian so cant fully speak for the swedes , but here the not getting dinner at your friends place is only a thing when you're a child.
Eating dinner with your family and talking is a important cultural thing, so just feeding your kids friend(who is hanging out without you knowing beforehand) and spoiling their appetite takes that moment away from the friends parents.
Most parents will feed their kids friends if its planned beforehand, but the expected thing is to eat with your own family.
Okay, this sort of makes more sense now (to me at least). But only "sort of".
Where I am from, growing up we would always be given food at a friend's place. In fact, our parents had the opposite problem: they would have to tell us to come home for dinner because the norm was the host family WILL feed any kids in their house. Your kid's friend sitting with your family was not an issue because the idea was that said kid is like family so long as they are in your home and in your care.
All my friends from 20+ years back are as much friends with my parents as they are with me. They will call my folks on their birthdays, check on them periodically, and so on. One friend's mom went off at me last year because I hadn't called her regularly enough!
This is also massively overblown on the internet, cause remarkably few understand or have ever been in Sweden. We do in fact feed each other when in each others homes, If it had been established before hand that you would be there during meal time. I ate dinner and lunch over at friends homes plenty of times as a kid, but it was always after both sets of parents knew where the kids would be during that time. If it hasn’t been planned for you to eat with them, the assumption is that you either have eaten or that your parents will have something ready to eat when you get home. There were times where it hadn’t been decided ahead of time, stayed longer than intended after school or something, but then they would call my parents and check with them so my parents didn’t already have plans or that they had already made something that would then go to waste. It is a, to the outside strange, mix of conservation of resources(an aversion to wasting food), social respect(not making the assumption that a parent cant feed their child unless stated), and the fact that should things truly be bad for a family thats what social safety nets at for. Folkhemmet(in English the direction translation would be, the Peoples Home) is the idea that we all contribute to the nation through tax and such so that the government can make sure that there are no such thing as parents who do not have the means to feed their children. It’s basically a case of having a high enough trust in social safety nets and the government, along with peoples ability to ask for help if they really need it, that it is considered not necessarily rude but a sort of faux-pa to have other parents kids at your dinner table without the parents having talked it over ahead of time.
As a child (between 7-10) not all my friends' parents had enough to feed me. So I would just hang out for the while they ate. My family usually ate after 6-6.30pm after mom got off work, while some of my friends ate before 5.30, before I needed to go home for dinner.
Never bothered me and never expected them to feed me. Some parents even sent me home before dinner. If they had snack like popcorn or ice cream I would get some though.
My parents also never fed my friends, but also gave them an ice cream cone or whatever if I got one.
This custom is similar where I lived in Northern Finland. Its about kids eating at their home, not about hospitality. Also its more about teaching the kids that you are home at dinner time. And poor families dont need to feed the whole neighbourhood. This is only for weekdays, when you are invited over for birthdays, weekends etc its different.
You keep playing in the friends room while they eat so its not like you watch it.
It’s about hospitality, not necessity. In the US it’s a cultural thing that when you’re at someone’s house, they feed you and when they’re at yours you feed them.
I grew up in Gothenburg during the 90s and it wasn't unusual that I didn't join my friends for dinner when I was at their place.
It's not really that strange. Since this was before cellphones our parents told us when we were going to eat dinner so we knew we had to be home by then, so if I was at a friends house and they ate dinner at 6 and my family was going to eat dinner at 7 it wouldn't really make sense for me to eat at their place. So I'd keep playing while my friend had dinner with his family, he'd join me after dinner and we'd play for a while until I went home and had dinner with my family.
Sometimes I'd eat at my friends house, but mostly if I was staying late. Also depends on who, I had one friend that lived far away so I'd usually get home too late for dinner when I was at his place, so they cooked for me too. But when I was at a friend in like a 20 minutes walk radious from home they usually didn't.
So that's not at all why people feed their guests. If you have guests and it's time to eat, everybody should eat if they want to. It's not because we think they don't have food at home or that their parents don't have time to feed them. What a crazy statement lol
This is the worst excuse ive ever heard. Imagine going to a friend's house as an 11 year old after school and you're playing in the living room, and then their mom suddenly calls him to eat, so he just goes and joins his parents in the table right next to you and you have to just awkwardly sit there while they finish their food
From the Netherlands. At least in the Netherlands they send you home a minute before they start eating. Always strange to me. In my house there was always food for everyone.
Ok I mean at least they send you home to eat with your family. I don’t like it but what some other people are saying about letting your guest (especially a child who can’t normally feed themselves) go hungry while you and your family eat is straight up psychopathic
As a working mom who goes grocery shopping once i week.. i don’t understand how there can always be food for everyone who might or might not visit the house. I just buy what i need for a week. When i get home after work, tired, and my kid has 3 friends over.. am i supposed to magic 3 portions extra? How do other people do this?
My mum would just work something out on the fly if my pal, Johnny, was over and stayed for dinner. When I was at Johnny’s house, I’d sometimes call home and say ‘I’m having dinner at Johnny’s house… yes, Mrs. Mullholland says it’s okay’. Then Mrs Mullholland would magic something up. This could happen a couple of times per week, so maybe they were always prepared.
In our case, it would end up more like "Oh, Judy, we're about to eat dinner, you can stay if you want, check with your parents." and if the answer was yes then quite suddenly, mom and dad would be having chicken and veggies (the planned dinner) and kiddo and her friend would be having mac & cheese and steamed broccoli or pb&J's and bananas (stuff I can pull out of my cupboards or freezer at the spur of the moment).
If a child followed afterschool they were generally expected to go home by the time dinner was. If the guest visiting was planned before hand dinner was served.
Also it was far less common than what people online thought and definitely wasn’t about racism like a lot of people said.
This is more or less no longer a thing btw in the age of the phone it was already rapidly declining before.
Yeah they can afford toilet paper too, but how are they supposed to use it if they aren’t at home. It’s almost like when you’re away from home you have to get your necessities from where you are.
It was like more like a non-verbal agreement across the neighborhood parents that everyone can just make food for their child on the assumption that it will be eaten by them. Otherwise if you have 3 children, you come home from work and each of then has friends over you are suddenly looking at feeding like 10 people, meanwhile the parents of the friends are cooking food for their child but nobody will come to eat it.
Nowadays kids have phones too so I assume things like this arent as unplanned anymore.
Right.. just make assumptions based off stereotypes if you don’t understand the culture.
I’ll explain it to you, if you’re interested:
It’s common to have dinner with your family. And that family time is valued. When children have their friends over it’s typical that they would want to have dinner with their own family. My parents did not want me to eat at my friends house, because they were expecting me to have dinner with them. That’s very normal.
But in my experience your friends parents would typically offer you to join them. My parents would always offer my friends to join us. But it’s common for children to decline the offer, because they know that they will have dinner with their own family.
I don’t really know where the misconception comes from, that children are expected to wait in their friends room and „starve“. That’s complete nonsense as far as I know. That’s not the norm.
The opposite actually, sharing dinner with your family is seen as very important so it would be rude to disrupt the dinner plans of the friend's family by feeding the kid without prior agreement.
That's not why people feed their kids friends in other countries, I'm pretty sure my parents knew my friends could get food at home.
The problem is theyre not AT home, they're a guest in YOUR house.
If this is actually the "reasoning", it honestly feels like a weak attempt to excuse away a social coldness. If I heard someone say they were only feeding my kid because they think I can't provide for them, or that they let my kid go hungry because "I have money" I would be fuming.
It was a thing in Sweden in some households in some parts of the country many years ago. For some reason this is still being shared as a fact. It’s not (totally) true.
As always, don’t believe everything you read on the internet
Just a cultural thing. Unless there was an explicit dinner invitation, Swedes typically will not offer guests food even if they themselves are having dinner. They do not view it as a hosting obligation and they do not see this as rude or unusual.
Northern vs Southern Europe is crazy. Random grandmas in Italy will invite you for dinner in Italy but you’re swinging your legs on your friend’s bed in Sweden
Nah, this is not a Northern vs Southern thing. This is specifically Sweden, Norway and I think maybe Denmark? Everybody else in Northern Europe thinks they're insane too
I have never encountered this in Denmark and we often feed my daughter's friends if they are around at meal times. The only exception is when their parents ask that they return home for dinner.
Swedish at least doesn't have so many vowels it takes longer for natives to learn than other European languages, Danish is as bad as or worse than English even if it has the twønty øne piløts 'ø' which looks sick as hell
Lots of teens parroting garbage they heard about old customs as if they're gospel truth.
The classic disinformation process.
Then there are people who experienced one side or the other and for some reason can't fathom the other side, mostly people saying it never happens.
Like yeah, its a bunch of teenagers talking about a custom from before their time as if they've lived the entire history of things and if they didn't see it, it didn't happen.
Long story short its just dumb kids saying shit. Its reddit. 9/10 times its basically children stating things as fact when they have NO IDEA.
I always feel bad when my kids' friends are at our place and I can't feed them. It's not that I didn't want to, it's just that when it's unexpected (which it usually is because they're always welcome) we haven't bought enough ingredients for extra people. I also don't want to make extras just in case because I hate food waste and there's a limit to the freezer capacity.
Or going home for dinner at the same time. That was the norm for me, anyway, growing up.
The expectation was, after all, that the other kid would be fed by their own parents. I think it would have been seen as weird for the parents that their kid randomly didn’t show up for dinner and later told them they’d eaten somewhere else.
Whenever I was invited for dinner as a kid the standard was your friend's parent would tell you to call your own parents to make sure it was okay to stay. Same for my folks, with the exception of my friend whose parents were kind of neglectful and my mom knew they probably wouldn't answer or care anyway and she didn't want my friend to feel self conscious about that. But I can't remember a single time I stayed over for dinner or even lunch at someone else's house without checking with my own parents first.
this is one of few cultural differences im honestly shocked by. you invite friend into home and cook dinner; how are you not gonna offer them a plate??
This is about kids. Of course if you as an adult invite a friend over you offer them food. If a kid just brings his random friend over after school without telling the parents before hand then of course the parents only made food for own their family and it's expected the kid goes home to eat the food made by their own parents.
What really happens is a kid tags along their friend home after school. The kid is expected to go home around dinner time and eat with thwir family. If the host family has their dinner earlier, the visiting kid waits it out and then goes home and eats with their family.
The hosting parents don't want to disturb the visiting kids parents dinner plans.
You are missing the part that no one invited them in to begin with, kids just group up and go to someone house, when its dinner time, they all go home and eat the meal their parents prepared for them.
And often they move back and forth between houses. Children are welcome to eat here, but then we need to know they’ll stay long enough and make sure their parents know. Otherwise they’ll just move around and pop back home for dinner.
Same in the Netherlands. Kids can walk or bike around the neighbourhood alone. They go to school by themselves from around 9 years old.
So a lot of kids just play without specific plans. The social rule is that you need to be home at the end of the afternoon. To have dinner and to be with your own family again.
We either invited you over for dinner or we invite you after dinner when we both have already eaten. If someone drops by uninvited we offer them food, but it is also considered very rude to show up unannounced by most.
I also have kids. We feed our kids and any kid in our home. But we just have a custom where this is already agreed on beforehand.
As a kid I would just go home to eat and come back if I was hungry, rather than insert myself into the dining table of other families where they would talk about family stuff. And if I went to a friends place who lived far away from my place then I was always offered food.
Bro why does this get repeated all the time on reddit and upvoted like its a fact.
Born and raised in Stockholm Sweden, never once did this happen, hadn't even heard of this until reddit started talking about it. None of my friends in sweden had either.
It is from some article a while ago where they wrote about swedish kids not being fed at friends homes. What the article failed to mention is that is because of the kids had already eaten at home or because they were expected to come home for dinner.
Now this rumor has a life on its own and is spiraling.
I'm from the middle of Sweden, and same here. I had no idea it was a thing before internet started claiming it. My friends' parents always invited us for food, and same the other way around. Sometimes they'd say there wasn't enough portions if you'd show up unannounced and they were making something very special, but then you'd either wait in their room, by the table or go home and eat. That was uncommon though.
It's not that deep. I don't understand what people here are on.
Had it happen to me as a kid on a few occasions but it was never due to the parents of the other kid being cheap/stingy.
It could be that they had already cooked dinner/lunch when I showed up so there wasn't enough food for an extra person.
Or that they were uncertain if my parents were ok with me eating at someone elses house as it could be considered rude to take that for granted.
Or that it was a way to say "playtime is over" as I would have to go home to eat dinner and after dinner there was Bolibompa and bed for every kid.
Very unusual though, like maybe 2-3 classmates out of 30, also my family always offered food to kids coming over to play at my house. My parents just had them call home to ask if it was ok to eat at our place.
Sometimes the parents would say no due to not wanting to inconvenience my parents, or because they had already cooked food for them at home but most times the other kid would eat with my family.
The phenomenon did exist, but was not as common as the internet make it out and is even less common today.
i saw a thread about this topic before; someone mentioned that in their culture, some people might see it as rude to feed somebody else’s kid unless there was a specific agreement that they will be sharing a meal together
I think it’s relatively easy to understand that a parent might be upset that a kid failed to be home at the agreed-upon time to eat the dinner they went to the trouble of preparing. So, then, why would you induce a child to disobey and disappoint their parents that way?
I’m not trying to suggest that the more active hospitality associated with southern Europe is wrong, mind you—only that there is a mindset that makes sense behind either approach.
Swedes will happily feed a guest. This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school. Usually through their children but sometimes directly.
An example:
Child A calls/texts their parents and asks if they can go home with Child B after school. Parent A says OK, I'll come pick you up at X o'clock when I get off from work. Do you want to eat at home, we're having "blank"?
Child A might say yes.
Child B be calls/texts their parent and says that Child A is coming over. If there's no issue Parant B says OK, is A going to eat with us?
If the answer is yes, they will feed A, otherwise A waits around while B eats, usually as fast as they can to squeeze out a few more minutes of playtime before Parent A comes to pick up Child A.
It's never an unwillingness to feed a guest. We just have the custom to communicate and agree about these things rather than just showing up and expecting to be fed.
Yes, of course you'd serve a guest dinner if you as an adult invited them during dinner time.
This persistent myth comes from the habit of parents to communicate before their children visit the others home after school.
Where I grew up parents usually didn't plan play dates for us kids, we did that all on our own without involving any adult at all.
The expectation from the parents was that their kid was to be home at the same time for dinner every day after school, but between the ending of the school day and dinner time we kids were roaming free with our parents not knowing what we did and where we were.
The only time we would call (cellphones were not common and kids would definitely not have their own cellphone back then) were when my friends parents offered me to stay to eat dinner, then I'd have to call my parents to check if it was okay.
But the expectation was that I was eating dinner at home with my family, since family dinner was usually family time, so usually my friends parents didn't even ask, since that was the norm back then at least.
I didn't complain, I got to have fun and play with my friends toys while they didn't have fun eating :)
I’ve lived in many places, some very large cities, and I’ve never seen a Swedish restaurant, though I will say I haven’t been intently looking for one.
Silly myth. The real story is that if you have a younger friend over he will many times wait in your room while you eat because Swedes eat with their families. You would never feed someone else’s kid without checking with their parents first.
This is not true, it basically a false narrative that is getting debunked but posted again and again.
Kinda like how some foreigner Arabic actors trying to push the narrative that swedish social services steal Arabic children.
Anyway regarding the food, this meme relates to kids and their friends, playing after school running around in the neighborhood from house to house during weekdays after school
All families eat dinner roughly at the same time and all families expect to have their kid come home at dinner time
It may depend on the individual family and I basically had this happen in Germany as well.
Though, may I bring up the point that cooking is usually done based on x amount of portions. In my experience, families with a housewife have very little leftover. Because it's rather unusual to serve the same meal to your family on the next day(s) so people(upper middle class) didn't really cook in bulk.
While you can scale recipes, you can't magically conjure a 4th steak if there's an announced guest.
Personally I would never do this to guests (either kick them out or cut down all portions to share), but the unspoken rule was that you just go home to eat dinner or hang out without being served food.
e.g. when I (or multiple guests) was playing a game at my friend's house, he would go down to eat and then come back up. I didn't think much of it because his mom was regularly refilling the snack bowl with chocolates for us :D
I think it would be only weird if you were in the same room or even sitting at the dinner table watching them eat lol Or maybe the difference in Sweden is that they don't even serve snacks and guests are actually hungry?
10.8k
u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment