Mark Woods: Swede dreams of children in control

For years now I’ve been suspicious of Sweden. Not in a global domination way you understand. I think they are too nice for that and probably got it out of their system 1,500 years ago. It’s more that almost every story and international league table published for the past decade or two that’s had anything to do with raising a family or social cohesion in general has seen them way out on top.

On the rare occasions that the super Swedes don’t hit top spot one of their Nordic mates fills in for them creating the unavoidable impression that they all know what they are doing and the rest of us are just playing at it. And they are so nice with it. How’s it all possible? Is it because there’s only 100 or so of them? Or because the often frigid temperatures make it easier to organise and regulate a populus to obtain maximum Ikea-esque efficiency? And why do things never go wrong over there in the liberal utopia like they do here on a regular basis?

Now Schadenfreude is an ugly word, but I have to admit to feeling an initial smidgen of something akin to it when reading about David Eberhard’s book How Children Took Power. In essence it points the finger squarely at the Swedish parenting model with its focus on the child deciding when it goes to bed, when it has its tea and all manner of other things and accuses it of creating a young nation of rude, conceited brats who “don’t say thank you, don’t open doors and don’t stand up for elderly people or pregnant women on the subway.”

Eberhard even goes on to suggest that Swedish parents now choose their holiday destinations to suit their children rather than themselves. It gets worse though: “If you have a dinner party, they never sit quietly. They interrupt. They’re always in the centre.”

They essentially, do his Swede in. So not so much a crisis of belief in the system then, more a realisation that children, no matter where they’re from or how they are brought up, tend to take a while to learn about the often random rules and regulations that the adult world has fashioned together to stop us all from tearing each other limb from limb.

Twitter:@mark_r_woods