Culture shock from the US

26 comments
  1. Hopefully this isn’t considered a meme, otherwise I’ll happily post at the appropriate time. This is a cartoon I drew myself. I was surprised to learn about the school schedule here. No school Wednesday for young kids and long lunches. Is the purpose for better life balance for kids?

  2. Had the same in Germany and Belgium. So it’s not really exclusive to Switzerland.

    As a kid it is great. The issue here in Switzerland is that there is often no day care available at schools to handle that. In the other countries I lived, we either had one mom/dad take care of my two best friends and me for that afternoon or we were all staying at school for the afternoon. No matter what it was. We had a blast and often even asked to stay in school, because there would be even more friends, especially during summer time.

  3. Father, ‘Hausmann’ here. Can confirm. I work part time and do the bulk of cleaning, shopping and cooking, as well as day to day kid management. Works fine for us, but there are weeks where I have to get larger projects finished / delivered and I wish it wasn’t so…

  4. It’s actually pretty sexist and misogynistic.

    So all women are housewives who wear bath robes all day, cook and sit in silence. And of course handle 100% of the childcare responsibilities…

  5. And it’s not just Wednesday! It’s 90 minutes for lunch every day and a couple afternoons a week in primary school.

  6. Wednesdays were the best as a kid. Later in the Gymnasium (don’t know the english equiv. but it’s “lycée” in french) we still got one free afternoon. Not necessarily on wednesdays though

  7. The good thing is, one does not have to chauffeur the kids around when they want to go anywhere further than the own cul-de-sac. 😉

  8. No worries, that list will fill quickly once the kids get older: Clothes shopping, musical practice, sports, other activities, bringing home neighbours….

  9. Oh god I’ve never related more to a post on here before.

    My mom finally visited us from my home country and finally said “are these kids ever in school?!” 😂😂 She couldn’t believe how much they were at home.

  10. The real shock to me is this seems to imply being a stay at home Mom is the norm.

    Is this how things are in Switzerland?

  11. Somehow this post makes we want to reply “well why did you have kids if you don’t want to see them as much as possible”. This thought of mine surprises me because I understand that kids are a real handful (I have 2 amazing nieces). I’m never going to have kids because the time and responsibilities they take are not something I (or my fiancée) am willing to give. So this is by no means intended to be an offense. I’m just wondering about this weird reflex-like thought that I had. If someone has an explanation/idea or had a similar train of thought please let me know.

  12. Very close: until middleschool (included) we have school on Wednesday, but just the mornings. How I miss those days…

  13. We had the opposite experience moving away from Switzerland! After a few years of juggling no primary school on Wednesdays in Geneva (and just about managing it around bosses and clients), now all the kids are in school every day and we miss hanging with them one weekday every week. Our youngest is missing out!

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