GOTHENBURG — It takes 13 hours from Berlin to get to Bullerbyn, the fictional Swedish town described by Astrid Lindgren in her 1947 children’s classic. Or to be more precise, to get to Sevedstorp, the provincial town in southern Sweden that Lindgren had in mind when she wrote The Six Bullerby Children. A blue and yellow Swedish flag flies in the wind over three red cottages with white windows. All around are fields, meadows and forests.
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While few Swedes live this picturesque lifestyle, it remains a prevalent image in German minds: a family paradise, where everything runs smoother than in Germany, allowing children to be carefree and parents to pursue their dream of equality. Yet is this merely an illusion for stressed urban families seeking refuge? What is the reality of Sweden as a family paradise?
Marie recently moved with her husband and one-year-old daughter from Lübeck, in northern Germany, to Gothenburg, in western Sweden, to continue her training as a radiologist. She believes that life as a family is better in Sweden.
“Being a mother here is less loaded,” the 28 year old says. “No one cares about how you carry your baby or if your 3-year-old still uses a pacifier.” Marie grew up with Lindgren’s stories and frequently visited Sweden as a child. She appreciates the absence of 70-hour workweeks and better childcare options for her daughter.
Better daycares?
In Sweden, childcare facilities often remain open on weekends and at night, accommodating single parents working shifts. Marie notes that overall, the daycare experience is much better than in Germany, although some days can be crowded with two to four caregivers looking after 20 children.
The Swedish Teachers’ Association, which also represents daycares staff, demands that one full-time employee look after a maximum of three children aged between 1 and 3 years. In addition, no more than 12 children of this age should attend the same daycare group. This responds to the education authority’s guideline but, in reality, is very rarely applied.
According to calculations by the teachers’ association, more than half of the groups are too large. Nursery teachers have been complaining about this for years: adequate care is not possible this way.
Family policy was recognized as a necessary means of democratizing society by promoting equality.
The birth rate in Sweden is falling. But instead of reducing the size of daycare groups, groups are being merged — to the point that nursery staff in Sweden even having trouble finding a job.
Scientists in Germany also advocate a childcare ratio of one educator to three children under the age of 3, but this is often not feasible: In Berlin, there is one daycare teacher for every 5.1 children, in other states the ratio is even higher. Only Baden-Württemberg and Bremen come close to the required childcare ratio with 2.9 and 3.2 children per educator respectively.
In contrast to Germany, where many parents face difficulties finding childcare spots, Marie feels fortunate that they secured their second-choice daycare for their daughter shortly after her first birthday.
Pioneer in parental leave
Marie and her husband work full-time, as do 71% of Swedish mothers and 89% of fathers with a child their daughter’s age. In Germany, just 27% of mothers with a child under the age of six work full-time. A good half of 1-year-olds in Sweden go to daycare and 92% of 2-year-olds — more than twice as many as in Germany.
This is also due to the fact that Sweden set the course for its progressive family policy decades ago. Since the beginning of the 1970s, married couples have also been taxed individually instead of being subject to spousal splitting.
Publicly funded childcare was massively expanded, and in 1974 Sweden became the first country in the world to introduce paid parental leave for both parents.
“At the time, family policy was recognized as a necessary means of democratizing society by promoting equality,” says Åsa Lundqvist, who researches Swedish family policy at Lund University.
Today, mothers and fathers can each take 240 days of paid parental leave, a total of around two months more than in Germany. Each parent must take 90 days of the 240 days, otherwise the parental allowance is forfeited. And 30 days of parental leave must be taken by one parent alone. The idea is an equal division of care work that turns mothers back into workers more quickly, and men into active fathers.
Fathers on leave
Marie’s husband also took parental leave after the move. “I see more men with children on the streets here than in Germany,” says Marie. Overall, much of parental leave takes place in public. There are huge children’s corners in museums and libraries, and fathers can meet and chat over free coffee in “dad groups,” often funded by the local authorities.
Johan Bävman has often attended such meetings with his sons, now 8 and 12 years old. The 42-year-old grew up in the countryside like a Lindgren character, but today, like most Swedes, he lives in a city, in Malmö. He took nine months’ parental leave, the same length of time as his wife.
In fact, only a fifth of Swedish couples share paid parental leave equally.
“It was never a question for me,” he says. In his circle of friends, it is common for fathers to take a few months’ parental leave. “But some were less keen on equality than I thought,” he says. Many didn’t use their parental leave days. “They thought they were the better breadwinners,” he says. And some mothers didn’t trust their partner to be a full-time father either.
In fact, only a fifth of Swedish couples share paid parental leave equally. Although this is significantly more than in Germany — where only 10% of fathers take more than two months — it is still a long way from equality in society as a whole.
Expensive life
Parental allowance in Sweden also depends on income. If you work part-time or in a low-paid job, you hardly get enough to live on. “This particularly affects single people,” says sociologist Lundqvist. And in couples, it often leads to the lower-earning person — often still the woman in Sweden — staying at home.
Living in Sweden is expensive. Affordable municipal housing is available, but often only after years on the waiting list. The alternative is expensive subletting.
But while cost of living in Sweden is high, wages are not necessarily higher. Marie earns about 4,000 euros per month as an assistant doctor, but takes home around 3,000 euros after taxes. At least a place in daycare costs no one in Sweden more than 150 euros a month, including food, and basic medical care is also free for children and young people.
Getting an appointment with a doctor, however, can be a challenge and take a long time: “If you are ill or have a sick child, you don’t usually go to a consultation, but instead call a hotline. A nurse then decides whether a visit to the doctor is necessary.”
Gang violence
Crime has also become an increasing concern in Sweden, which had 53 gun-related deaths last year.
If you count the deaths in relation to the number of inhabitants, Sweden ranks third in Europe, behind Montenegro and Albania. Most people were shot dead in large cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, where gangs also plant explosive devices in residential areas and recruit young people to deal.
In the housing estate on the outskirts of Malmö, where Johan Bävman lives with his family, children can play freely in the street. But his older son is often alone in the city center to skateboard. “Of course I worry when I don’t know where he is,” says Johan.
Although many things are not perfect in Sweden, they are much better than in Germany.
“Criminals cause a small rift in society,” he says, but they are mainly present in the media, not so much in his everyday family life. “I try not to be afraid in general,” he says. Malmö is a beautiful city where most people are nice and friendly.
Nevertheless, he sometimes dreamed of going back to the countryside when his children were younger. Even those who grew up there, like him, quickly forget that there are just as many problems.
“It’s much harder to be who you are,” Johan says. Country life offers hardly any variety, but you are more likely to encounter narrow-mindedness and racism there than in the big city. “Something I don’t want to pass on to my children,” says Johan.
More equality than elsewhere
If you can’t escape crime and intolerance in Sweden either, the medical care situation is strained, housing in cities is scarce and life is expensive, and equal parenthood is far from a set reality for now — why do so many Germans, especially families, still look enviously to the north?
Yvonne Lott, head of the gender research department at the Böckler Foundation’s Institute of Economic and Social Sciences, says that although many things are not perfect in Sweden, they are much better than in Germany.
I would choose Sweden over Germany again any time.
“We are lagging behind in terms of equality in particular,” Lott says. Two-thirds of working mothers, but only one in 10 fathers, work part-time. On average, women do almost one and a half hours more unpaid work per day than men. And with a gender pay gap of 18%, one and a half times as much as in Sweden, there is more inequality in the work world in Germany than almost anywhere else in Europe.
Decades of conservative leadership have left their mark on traditional role models, especially in former West Germany. “Working mothers are torn between contradictory expectations,” says Lott. “If I work part-time, I can forget about my management position. And if I work full-time, I’m a bad mother.”
In Sweden, Marie says, she has never been asked who looks after her daughter while she is at work in hospital.
Nature nearby
Sociologist Åsa Lundqvist says there is no longer a debate in Sweden about whether equality is desirable. “We haven’t arrived yet, but since the Social Democrats focused their family policy on gender equality in the 1970s, all political parties have pursued this goal,” she says.
Since July of this year, parents have been able to transfer part of their parental leave to grandparents and even friends — a reform introduced by the conservative-liberal government.
And then, of course, there is the nature, which many Germans envy the Swedes for. More than half of the 111 million hectares of land is covered in forest, plus almost 100,000 lakes and two coasts.
“That’s good for your well-being,” says Marie. From her apartment in Sweden’s second-largest city, it takes less than an hour by tram to get to the sea, and the nearest nature reserve is within walking distance. “I would choose Sweden over Germany again any time,” she says.
