Motherhood around the world: Work and family culture
This is the final installation in a four-part series on American mothers living abroad. Past articles have addressed pregnancy and birth, parental leave, and childcare. This week is a bit of a “catch-all”. I wanted to capture interviewees’ thoughts on the larger work and family culture where they live, as well as their experiences raising kids abroad. I want to, again, thank each of the interviewees who shared their time and experience. I hope you loved hearing about their lives as much as I did!
Work culture
Evelyn, geologist, Denmark: I think the fundamental difference between Denmark and the United States, is that the primary value in that country is quality of life. The point of working, the point of taxes, the point of government, the point of everything there is for people to have as good of a life as they can have. And so policies, laws, institutions, are all designed to say, “how does this make your life better?” And one of the most fundamental parts of that is strength of family life. And so the way they think about the medical system, the way they think about vacation or time off, the way they think about work is, “how is this going to make your family life good? How is this going to make space for you to have quality time in the world?” And that doesn't mean that people aren't passionate about their work, it's just they work to live, they don't live to work. And that is just a fundamental value of the country.
Isabella, market researcher, Singapore: Singaporean work culture is very intense. I would say that it's on par with the US, at least when I left 10 years ago. My understanding is that now post-Covid, the US is a bit more flexible. I don't know, maybe it’s “the grass is greener” syndrome, but Singapore is quite intense and there's a lot of burnout and high expectations depending on the field you are in. If you think about the fields that are really big in Singapore—finance and commodities—it's all very high stress jobs. So there's definitely a culture of burnout, in my opinion. And I don't think that parents and moms especially are exempt. So for me, coming back [from parental leave], I definitely felt like there was pressure for me to get back to where I was fairly quickly. And it was really challenging.
Also, I think that it's really encouraged for both parents to be working. And because a lot of these childcare tasks are being delegated, it’s do-able. This expectation exists because the cost of living in Singapore is very, very high. And not only is it very high, but is there's a lot of “keeping up with the Joneses” culture. So people take super nice vacations and they go to super nice restaurants all the time. I think a lot of people just could not maintain their lifestyle in a one income household.
Kate, hospital administration, Canada: My best guess would be like if the US is at one end of a continuum and Sweden is at the other, Canada is like a third of the way away from the US. There's certainly structure and policy and culture that help, but it's still within the context of pretty North American capitalistic expectations. All of this support is predicated on you figuring out a way to deliver the real results you need to deliver. And so everything I've described is wonderful, but that means that I—and many of my peers here—work a lot of nights and weekends to make it all work, and it's a lot of pushing the limits of outsourcing to make it all work.
Daphne, marketing and design consultant, England: It kind of feels like [progress] goes east, right? The US has a lot it needs to work on. Once you get to the UK, you see the beginning of family-friendly policies. And as you go east geographically it gets better. Everyone knows about France giving you pelvic floor rehabilitation after you give birth. And then Sweden and Denmark are the holy grail of shared parental leave. And I had friends who were German who had kids here in the UK and moved back to Germany because they were literally paid to stay home with their kid if they moved back to Germany.
Natalie, graphic designer, Sweden: I was recently laid off, and this has presented a problem for me. After living here for four years, both my husband and I should have qualified for permanent residency, but because I am a woman who is not working, they don't want me here. It's “support yourself or get out”. And this is a rule that was implemented in 2021 when the right wing, anti-immigrant party took power, and it's a backlash to the Syrian refugee crisis.
So the Swedish government is kind of weaponizing these systems [like funded day care]—that should technically be empowering—to punish, largely, Muslim women. And then in this case, I happened to get caught in the crossfire.
Families in society
Denise, self-employed editor and author, the Netherlands: I feel like parents are a lot more laid back, but maybe too laid back? And that could be me looking at it through an American lens or through a Caribbean lens (my family is Jamaican). But I find Dutch parenting lacking in some ways. The things that I get complimented on with my kids I feel shouldn't be even compliments because it's just how you raise a decent person. And it's always commented on like, “oh, they're so polite, they're so nice, they're so considerate”. I'm like, those are just traits, good human traits!
Natalie, graphic designer, Sweden: Kids have more space for independence. There is more space to play. They're not constantly shoved into these little boxes. They're left a little bit more to their own devices because there are a lot of public spaces where it's safe to let them be. But I feel like there's not as much of the parenting guilt. It's not talked about in the same way.
Evelyn, geologist, Denmark: One thing that I think was really important, and it kind of goes back to the value of children in society, is that the whole city was built for families with children. You were never more than a few blocks away from a park. The nearest park by our house had a sandbox and there was a little hut, and there was a person who worked there and would open it up and bring sand toys out for kids to play with in the sandbox and would bring bikes out and all the different things on wheels that you could imagine kids would like to play with. And so it wasn't just a play structure. There were toys there, and there was a little station with a sink and there was a first aid, a person on there to handle first aid. And it was a little place you could go and have a good time. Not every park was like that, but there were parks like that in every neighborhood. So you didn't have to have a bike at home for your kid to learn how to ride a bike. You didn't have to bring your own bucket and pail and scoops for your kid to play in the sand.
It was common to have stroller parking everywhere. Every single restaurant had a changing station, and not some horribly ugly, uncomfortable thing. They would make a space for you to go change your child's diapers. And in places where the mom or the dad could do it, everything was just outfitted to make sure that families knew they were welcome everywhere, all over the place. There was no place that you didn't really feel like you could bring your kid. And I think that's quite different than United States.
And then the last thing I'll say, which is a big difference, is just the attitude with which children are treated was, I think, much calmer and much more respectful. And one of the biggest adjustments that we had to deal with when we moved back to the United States was how loud people are when they're around small children. Because we were so used to everybody being calm, quiet, thoughtful. When kids were having a hard time, you'd sit and have a conversation with them about what was going on. In general, it was just a less intense society, and that translated to how people treated children—and that, in turn, translated to how children behaved.
Isabella, market researcher, Singapore: In Singapore, a lot of young people are not wanting to have children because it is so expensive to maintain them. So part of the reason the government offers so many benefits [to citizens] is because they want people to have more children. But most of the Singaporeans that I have worked with either didn't have children or were not planning to have children.
Raising kids abroad
Denise, self-employed editor and author, the Netherlands: It's much safer here. There's crime, of course, but not as much and it’s not random. And when you move—after you’ve always lived in this shell of having to protect yourself that you no longer need—you see that you only needed it because of circumstance, you only needed it because of location. It really messes with your head and your body. Your body starts to shed all of this stress. I think it takes two or three years of living abroad to really feel it. So once you feel that, I think it makes it harder for you to want to go back [to the US].
But when I had kids, their safety was never a top concern of mine, because I know the things that happen, unfortunately, in America just do not really happen here—at least not in Amsterdam. So it's hard because I want to be able to teach them to be street smart, but then it's almost like, well, am I teaching them street smarts because I am from an urban community? Am I giving them some weird trauma that you always have to watch your back? I don't want them to grow up with that. It's idyllic here in comparison. And I'm always very aware of robbing Black kids of their innocence because I know my own innocence was shattered very young.
My kids know some of the stories of Black people being murdered in the US, but they don't live with those stories. And I always kind of grapple with that, because I don't want them to have to live with it—no one should have to live with it, it shouldn't be happening. But how do I make them aware of their surroundings? Make them aware that you can't just be mindless on the road. So I just have to work on finding that balance. But so far so good.
Natalie, graphic designer, Sweden: A lot of what I like about living here is not portable. I love that you can swim in the middle of the city in clean outdoor water as much as the free childcare. I love that schools let kids spend so much time outside—they take them to the forest, they were foraging apples the other day. They let them build little lean-tos out of sticks in the woods and they just let them run around. That's what keeps me here. That's the culture that I can't give up.
What a fascinating series -- thank you!