They make hotels out of ice. They champion Chelsea boots and cream sweaters. They get 16 months of shared paternity leave, with the non-gestating partner obliged to use at least some of it.
They gave us The Cardigans and Lovefool, the only song to make late-90s me dance by swaying my knees and head in opposite directions while convinced I looked like a delightful pixie, rather than someone confused about which way the toilets were.
All these things (and my recent recurring dream about bathing in a vat of meatballs) make me secretly want to be a Swede.
And now, it seems, there’s another reason: how they choose to raise tiny Swedes.
A new book, Parenthood the Swedish Way, tells us lots of things that appeal to me.
The book (which describes the Swedish way of parenting as ‘practical, egalitarian and free from outdated myths’) says there’s no need to bother sterilising things in most industrial countries, and that merrily glugging a few glasses of wine a week through pregnancy is fine. In the same week that another UK study claimed drinking any alcohol at all during pregnancy can cause harm to unborn children, causing confusion again for all mums-to-be, it especially seems appealing.
These are things (the sterilising especially) I could have done with knowing all those times I was staring, eye a-twitch, while willing a kettle to boil at 3am as an infant mewled in my ear.
And this isn’t any old book by any old passing Scandinavians. It comes from Dr Agnes Wold (named Sweden's Woman of the Year for her work in women's health) and paediatrician Cecilia Chrapkowska (vaccinations specialist and author of the country's most popular parenting blog). They have the science to prove it’s OK to sip a pinot while baby is on the breast.
But the biggest sell for me is that they want an equal division of labour (pardon the pun) between both parents. Whether you’re two dads, two mums, a six-handed throuple or something more traditional, they reckon childrearing chores need to be listed and divided ‘to the second’. For when one parent takes the whole load, resentment can fester often leading to irretrievable breakdown.
‘Keeping on working is of the highest importance both for yourself and your children,’ they say in the book. Countering any arguments that ‘mum knows best’, the pair don’t accept the myth that women are biologically more programmed to care for their children. Essentially, that practice makes (almost) perfect works for both sexes.
‘Parental brains are programmed to take care of helpless babies,’ they say. ‘But the neural pathways have to be activated, and the more we use them, the better they work. We have to practise being a parent, just as we have to practise riding a bike.’
In my own new book with my husband Matt, Where’s My Happy Ending, the biggest discovery we made was that having kids is proven to be detrimental to any kind of relationship set up, in every continent on earth.
I love my kids more than my own internal organs, but there’s no denying they put a strain on things between Matt and me. He’s as likely to fetch a ketchup-smeared nipper from school or nursery as I am, but whenever one of us ends up taking the bulk of parental duties for a few days in a row, marital harmony rapidly withers.
So, yes, I’m with the Swedes on this. And while we won't be keeping a nappy-changing tally, we will make sure the parental chores are a bit more evenly spread.
Where’s My Happy Ending? Happily Ever After And How The Heck To Get There, is out on 6 February.
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