Dad culture in Schweden
Erstellt von Hans-Georg Nelles am Samstag 4. September 2010
Ezra Klein zitiert in der Washington Post die Erfahrungen von Nathan Hegedus und bezeichnet die Politik in Schweden als gutes Beispiel, wie Politik die Wünsche von Vätern, mehr Zeit mit ihren Kindern verbringen zu wollen, unterstützen und eine Kultur der Anerkennung aktiver Vaterschaft aufbauen kann.
‘If you had asked me in, say, 2001, if I would ever take a long paternity leave, I would have answered, „Yeah, sure,“ because I was a liberal guy — but then ignored my own answer because I was also an ambitious, career-driven type. Then I married a Swede, and we moved to a small town outside New York City that was close to no family or friends. Out of necessity, and my wife’s Swedish expectations, I got deeply involved in our upcoming baby’s life, though probably still no more than many American dads-to-be. We had a rough ride. My wife had bad doctors and a bad back, and we lived in a house covered with lead paint and infested with bats, rats, and bedbugs. It all began to seem overwhelming. In the end, almost more than my wife, I pushed for the move to Sweden, to the promise of parental leave, shorter work days, five weeks of vacation, and unlimited paid sick days if your kid falls ill.[…]
Over the past 15 years, the streets of Stockholm have filled up with men pushing strollers. In 1995, dads took only 6 percent of Sweden’s allotted 480 days of parental leave per child. Then the Swedish government set aside 30 leave days for fathers only. In 2002 the state doubled the „daddy only“ days to 60 and later added an „equality bonus“ for couples that split their leave. Now more than 80 percent of fathers take some leave, adding up to almost a quarter of all leave days. So in the middle of, say, a Monday afternoon in March, the daddies and their strollers come at you both singly and in waves, the men usually either striding fast and stone-faced or pushing the stroller nonchalantly with one hand, cellphone glued to their ear.’
