The rest of the world has much to learn from the Scandinavian way of life. The results are there for everyone to see – “their sky-high living standards, low crime rates, enviable maternity and paternity rights and exceptional aesthetics.” Scandinavian countries consistently rank high on world happiness indicators. Another aspect of the Scandinavian way of life is their free-range parenting i.e, how they raise kids which could also possibly explain some of the other good things about its society.
“It’s 1.30pm. Nila and Arion arrive home after finishing school for the day. They let themselves in, make some food, then sit down to do homework, or practise piano, or do the housework they’ve been asked to do. Their parents won’t be home for a few hours yet. The children sometimes go out with friends to play in the street or wander the fields. The only real rule is no screen time unless everything else has been taken care of.
So far, so normal, perhaps, except the sister and brother are just 10 and eight, and they’ve been living this kind of unsupervised mini-adult life for years.
They live in Stavanger, on the south-west coast of Norway. Like all of their friends, they’ve been walking to and from school alone since they first attended at the age of six. They were given their own set of house keys soon after. This is the parenting way in Norway – it’s decidedly free-range, with an emphasis on independence, self-determination and responsibility, with a dash of outdoor fun thrown in for good measure.”
Apparently this has long historical roots:
“There’s evidence that Viking children as far back as the ninth century were raised in a relatively similar way: treated as adults and expected to chip in with whatever work needed to be done. It’s a way of life, deeply ingrained to the point that most Norwegians I’ve spoken to can’t understand either the fascination with their method, or why anyone would do it differently.
This more nuanced modern take – more conversations about feelings, less pillaging – rose to prominence in the aftermath of the second world war, says Willy-Tore Mørch, emeritus professor in children’s mental health at the University of Tromsø. Much of the country’s infrastructure had been devastated by the years of Nazi occupation. Rising to the challenge, the newly formed Labour government believed that all Norwegians should contribute to the rebuilding – children included.
“The children had to be strong and hardened, and trained to be independent and loyal,” says Mørch. “Perhaps most parents today are not aware of this history, but building trust between parents and children remains a basic relational quality in modern Norwegian child-raising.””
But Scandinavians’ gender equality also necessitates such a parenting style:
“Norway has among the most gender-equal workforces, with about 73% of all men of working age in employment, and about 67% of women. Childcare is also widely available and highly affordable, meaning that going out to work is financially worthwhile.”
Necessity aside, embedded in the parenting style is a desire to instil trust and responsibility very early on in their lives:
“…in Norway, even young children will organise their social events and manage their spare time. They just get on with things. It’s normal for Norwegian children to tell their parents what they’re doing; it’s not that normal to ask permission. They are just trusted to make good decisions.”
Trust is something that comes up when I talk to Giancarlo and Lena about their parenting, and how mutual respect is crucial. In the school holidays, for example, they’re happy for Nila and Arion to be out all day as long as they know roughly what time they’ll return – and the children comply. Lena says this is how her mother and grandmother were raised, and fondly remembers going to school herself as a six-year-old with a front door key around her neck on a piece of string. She also thinks this way of parenting should be preserved, despite the temptation to introduce technology into the equation.
“You can get GPS watches for kids, where you can track them and so on,” she says. “[But] it’s really important to me that it’s not a fake sense of freedom that we give the children. There was one time we thought Nila had gone missing, and even though I know if she’d had one of those watches we could’ve just checked to see where she was and not been worried, that’s not the point.”
It turns out Nila had been playing out with a friend when the friend’s grandparent invited them indoors for a drink and an iced bun and she had simply lost track of time. “It was important for her to see we were worried, and she’s never done it again,” says Lena.
Failure, it seems, is a big part of Norwegian parenting – enjoy the freedom to make mistakes, but learn from them. There’s a tacit understanding that yes, you can climb that tree, but you might fall and hurt yourself. Or maybe falling will make you a better climber in future?
…She believes instilling these skills helps foster independence, but boosts confidence, too, leading to mature adolescents and steady, grounded adults with a head for decision-making.”
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