Thread by @studentactivism

The range and depth of the discussion in replies regarding this apparently common Scandinavian practice is FASCINATING.

https://twitter.com/SamQari/status/1529868644846641153

Yes, this, exactly.

https://twitter.com/kevinkam/status/1530870205299187712

And the other side of the coin is that it jumped the fence to Swedish Twitter, where some people are like, "Oh, I don't think this is specifically a Swedish thing."

https://twitter.com/NNorrhall/status/1529895025534021644

Anyway, I'm definitely stealing this for my next "living in a multicultural community fosters very different skills than living in a monoculture" class discussion.

Because to some extent this really is a monoculture/multiculture thing. If everyone knows the rules, and everyone agrees on the rules, it's a lot less likely that anyone's going to be inconvenienced by the rules.

Like, it absolutely strikes me as a super weird way to organize a society, but the number of people going "well of COURSE I wouldn't expect to be fed in that situation" suggests that it's not inherently dysfunctional.

BTW, some Swedes in replies were arguing that if you fed the kid, and their family ate later, you might ruin their appetite. And someone said they'd gotten in trouble with other parents FOR feeding a kid—because that family was vegetarian, or all organic, or whatever.

Which again points to the idea that any time you have a community with multiple social codes, complexity of social interaction ramps up really quickly.

Just saw a tweet in Spanish that was basically "I showed #sueciagate to my mom, and she started hyperventilating and had to sit down. As soon as she recovered, she ran to the kitchen to start roasting peppers in case we had a visitor."

I wish to inform you that I have Danes and Norwegians in my mentions saying that they would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.

No word from the Finns yet.

(But the Dutch are here going "yeah, that's us too.")

And someone from Iceland just faved this tweet.

https://twitter.com/studentactivism/status/1530895664053374976

This is a good point. A lot of people are like "why wouldn't you just call," but if it's not socially acceptable to feed an unexpected guest, it's not gonna be acceptable to call and say "your child is an unexpected guest in my home. Should I feed them?"

https://twitter.com/diffusefield/status/1530901562683445248

The premise that asking blunt questions to resolve a socially awkward situation is itself socially awkward is EXTREMELY widespread, including in modern, multicultural, cosmopolitan contexts.

STILL WAITING ON THE FINNS.

https://twitter.com/likeluke/status/1530927229810528256

(Although we do have this Finn-adjacent perspective.)

https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/1530927946814222336

One thing I want to underscore, though I guess it's obvious, is that none of these kinds of codes are actually universal on a national level. There will always be regional, class, urban/rural distinctions.

(It's fun to gawk at the Swedes, in other words, but I do feel a little reductive in doing so. Sorry, Swedes!)

One thing that fascinates me about this is how many people are saying that it's actually a pretty narrow, well-defined rule. Like, "if you were expected for dinner, you'll be given dinner, but if not, the family will eat dinner as planned and you're welcome to stay and wait."

Which, if you were a space alien with no cultural assumptions about humans, might well read as a MORE hospitable approach than the common American "we're having dinner now, so it's time for you to leave."

Part of that has to do with cultural attitudes around food as a marker of friendship and hospitality, but part of it is just "my cultural practices are regular, yours are weird."

I also like that folks who are familiar with this are offering a zillion different explanations, all plausible, many mutually exclusive. Culture is weird and complicated and really hard to fully understand!

Can't tell if (a few) folks are reacting intensely to the below tweet because they've really never experienced kids being told to bring a playdate to an end because it's dinner time, or just because of the (intentionally overly) blunt way I phrased it.

https://twitter.com/studentactivism/status/1530959806667886594

I've certainly witnessed parents saying "you guys should wrap up because it's time for dinner," though I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's less common now than it was when I was a kid and Family Dinner was more of a cultural institution.

But either way it's yet another example of folks assuming that the thing they're familiar with is the default—both on my part and that of the people who were shocked by what I said.

Yeah, this too.

https://twitter.com/SYKOScoRch/status/1531085330761121792

(Often with the "no" being implicitly or explicitly linked to the idea that after dinner there needed to be a quick pivot to homework or a bath or getting ready for bed or whatever, and that ending the playdate before dinner would make that go more smoothly.)