Myth: Swedes are amazing parents
Fact: Swedes are rather bad at parenting
Child abuse statistics indicate that Sweden has perhaps the best parents in the world. So do statistics about how much time do parents spend playing with their kids.
But spending time with your children and not abusing them is only the tip of the iceberg of good parenting. The actual parenting is teaching your child manners, setting some proper limits on what they may do, and making them serious persons. While the Swedes indeed spend much time with their kids, they don't seem to do the actual parenting very well.
Before I elaborate, I will begin stating one thing: my wife is a pediatrician who has worked in both Greece and Sweden. Even though child neglect and even abuse are unfortunately rather common in Greece, she had never encountered a case of attempted suicide, real or fake, of a minor when working there. In Sweden, teens faking suicide attempts are almost routine for the doctors, and all of this despite the attention they receive. And of course, there are cases when the attempted suicides are not fake at all. I may sound harsh, but a good parent sees the unhappiness of their child before they attempt a suicide, and definitely does not rise kids that would fake one to draw attention.
She has observed the same for black-out drunk teens -she sees some almost every weekend in Sweden and virtually never in Greece-, but I'll be honest here: Greek teens just drink more responsibly and take care of each another. Yet the fact that Swedish teens get often black-out drunk is also indicative of the parenting here.
The Swedish parent seems incapable of ever saying "no" to their kids, let alone forcing it. I have seen children screaming in public and just getting what they want. I have even seen a boy kicking his mother at a parking for no obvious reason, and she just pretended everything was normal.
In Swedish culture, not being strict with your child and not giving them consequences for their actions is the epitome of great parenting, but common sense in all other cultures says otherwise: actions have consequences, and parents are human beings with rights too. A child's right to the newest iPhone (if we suppose such a right exists) is not more significant than the parent's right to invest the money on something else. And if the child chooses to literally attack the parent for not buying the latest iphone, a violent reaction from the parent is perfectly reasonable.
Another example of awful parenting here, is how parents just allow their teenage kids to be sexually active without any protections. Sexual education and basic responsibility seem to be absent, and pediatricians often treat teenagers with STDs. The parents seem to be fully aware that their children are sexually active, and not only don't impose any limitations, but may even approve of their teenage kids "having fun" this way.
Is this good parenting? I leave the answer to you. And the number of teen suicides (or, mostly, attempted "suicides"), indicates an answer.
Myth: Swedes are cold and distant.
Fact: Swedes are friendly and nice, especially compared to other Scandinavians
There is a stereotype that the Nordics, including Swedes, are just like the weather of their countries: cold and unfriendly. Barely smiling, silent, suspicious, and almost... weirdos for our standards. In my experience, this may have some truth for Norwegians and Finns (no offence!), but when it comes to Swedes, I think it would be very unfair to have the same stereotype for them.
While it is true that the average Swede will not call you over to their place after meeting you or even after working months with you, the everyday behavior of the people here is warmer and friendlier than the everyday behavior of my compatriots. Swedes are kinder than Greeks and smile more.
Of course, one might object that this is just the tip of the iceberg of someone's openness. Indeed, I barely have any Swedish friends and I use Swedish almost exclusively at the workplace: you can't really approach the average Swede more than the everyday level (especially if you are a foreigner), but I have noticed that my even my younger Swedish colleagues don't socialize with each other outside the workplace. In Greece it is rather common that the younger workers become buddies even outside the workplace. It seems that Swedes are less interested in making new friends.
Still, the everyday behavior of the people here is nothing like what one expects, and I wouldn't call it cold or unpleasant.
Myth: Sweden has become a hell on earth thanks to the immigrants
Fact: Sweden is fine, but has a far right party that drags its' fame to the mug internationally to use this bad reputation as an argument in the political debate afterwards.
I used to believe this myth too. Indeed, my initial intention was to go to Norway instead, and ending up in Sweden was a series of accidents. In my mind, Swedish was an ex-decent country, now facing collosal problems due to the immigrants who allegedly "exploit the welfare state".
I was genuinely afraid of what I was going to find when coming. The Angry Foreigner and other far-right youtubers had persuaded me that Sweden used to be great, but is now a true hell on earth, full of Jihadis wearing burkas and preaching Islam, and even forcing the Sharia (!?) in city neighbourhoods. Whenever those immigrants weren't imposing the Sharia, they were slacking around all day long, living on benefits and hating the West for the heck of it.
And then I came here.
And I saw the immigrants doing all the heavy work. Collecting garbage, cleaning toilets, washing dishes, and taking care of the elderly -whose Swedish children were too busy to care about them and don't even visit them anymore (I will write about this aspect of the Swedish culture -the weak sense of family- on another post). I also saw immigrants working as doctors, engineers, programmers, and architects, most often outrageously underpaid for their experience compared to Swedes with the same credentials. In fact, me and my wife were among those.
And those immigrants weren't preaching the Sharia. Even the ones coming from the middle East, actually had absorbed the American ("western") culture more than well, including its' negative aspects, like listening to gangsta trap, dressing up like influencers, overconsuming, having extramarital affairs, and drinking alcohol. Their women are often (far from always) wearing the Hijab, but they otherwise dress up like any western woman and use make-up (often extensively). All of this is forbidden in Islam.
Where were the burqas? Where were the Sharia neighbourhoods? Where were the hateful muslims who only came here to live on welfare and don't work?
I would supposedly find some of these in one of the most criminal neighbourhoods of Sweden: Ryd in Skövde. I lived in Skövde for almost two years, and visited Ryd several times because I had buddies who lived there. That was indeed a gangsta ghetto, but guess what: it was a hundred times safer than Kypseli, Sepolia, Omonoia, Menidi, and Patisia in Athens, Greece. Not to mention romani Ghettos like Dendropotamos or Kamilovrisi. Greece has way more dangerous areas than Sweden, yet is not reputed for having them.
So, why does Sweden have such a reputation? Why have so many people associated Sweden with gangsta ghettos, burqas, and lazy muslim immigrants? The answer is surprisingly simple: the far right here, seeing that it failed to have the success of the far right of other EU countries after the 2008 recession, resorted to defaming its' own country internationally with gross over-exaggerations and blatant lies of what is going on here.
This negative publicity was then used as an argument in the political debate. "Everyone sees out country as a hellish nightmare thanks to those muslim immigrants. Please vote for us!!1!". For the first time in political history, a party disgraced its' own country globally to beg for votes. This party is no other than SD (Sverigedemokraterna) aka Swedish Democrats.
I remember their youtubers' monstrous "predictions" from 2016-2017: Sweden would be muslim and Swedes would have become a minority by 2025. It is now October 2024. I guess we have two months before becoming the new Afghanistan...
Myth: Sweden does well because Swedish culture is superior or because of "Nordic socialism"
Fact: Sweden does well mostly because no one was interested in conquering or controlling it.
It is almost expected to build up a decent country if no one invades you or overthrowns your democratically elected governments. If you bother looking at the recent history of the middle East, the Balkans including Greece, Latin America, and other "failed states" around the world, you see a clear pattern: all had wars and political instability, often thanks to the US & UK "interventions" in the area.
Taking Greece as an example, Greece had seven (!) wars only in the 1900s (1912, 1913, WW1, 1918 Odessus campaign, 1919-1922 Asia Minor campaign, WW2, and Cyprus 1974) and a devastating civil war (1946-1949). Except for the first two, all the others were in a way or another initiated by superpowers. One of the aforementioned wars was followed by a mass immigration from Asia Minor (about 25% of the population), where all Greeks, and even Orthodox Romani, Turks, and Lazs from Turkey were resettled in Greece. The second world war was followed by the German occupation, where our lovely Germans massacred the population either by mass executions or by depriving them from food. The occupation was followed by a civil war and political instability -more than 20 regime changes between 1945-1975 including a US-initiated dictatorship that lasted seven years. All of this because of our strategic position in the mediterranean and the US&UK "interventions".
A similar pattern can be found on all middle eastern and Balkan countries. As a matter of fact and precision, even the Greek hell is a heaven compared to what Syrians, Iranians, Egyptians, Libyans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Romanians, and former Yugoslavs have been through.
Sweden, on the other hand, enjoyed a perfect political stability, with no abrupt regime changes, no superpowers using it for proxy wars, no foreign invasions in the 1900s, no German occupation, no civil wars, no dictatorships: nothing really bad happened in Sweden in the 20th century.
I have been seeing the whole world worshipping Sweden (and Scandinavia in general) for doing well and throwing shit to the Balkans and the Middle East for not doing so well, yet few if any take into account the historical background.
Bravo to the Swedes for building up a successful state, but we should stop pretending they did it because they are in some way superior or because of some "nordic socialism". They just had no one interested in conquering or controlling them.
"Nordic socialism" would never have worked if the USA had the same interest in controlling the area as e.g. Latin America. The Swedish Pinochets and Armas would overthrown the Swedish Allendes and Arbenzs, and Sweden would be as much of a hellhole as Chile and Guatemala. This didn't happen because the USA didn't care enough.
Nordic prosperity is not necessarily proof of nordic superiority, but it definitely is indicative of what the world might look like if it wasn't the USA and the UK intervening.
Myth: Sweden has amazing healthcare
Fact: Sweden has good, but far from amazing healthcare.
(coming soon)
