Is this a shared characteristic?

https://www.newsweek.com/zara-larsson-debate-sweden-house-tradition-not-feeding-guests-1711336

14 comments

  1. When I grew up in Oslo in 2000s: Highly inaccurate. I frequently had friends at home after school and they always had dinner with us (Sometimes half-way force fed, if it was blood pudding on the menu). Same if I went to a friend’s place to play.

  2. My experience growing up:

    The default is that every kid goes home for dinner. The expectation is that the kid will arrive at a pre-arranged time, and not already have eaten dinner. Feeding a child dinner without talking to the parents first is not typically done. Usually that means sending the child home before eating dinner, but in some rare cases if the dinner times of the two families are very different it could happen that a visiting child stays in a separate room while the family is eating dinner.

    Eating dinner with a different family is something that needs to be arranged in advance with agreement from both sets of parents. Typically that same agreement would involve staying until bedtime, or even a sleepover.

  3. Yeah you dont get food.
    When i was a kid and asked if my friend could eat dinner with us my mom would get very annoyed. Dinner is family time and the answer was always ‘he has food at home’

    If you are an invited guest and an adult its different.

    But if ur the childs friend ur not getting food.
    If ur an unplanned guest ur not getting food.

    Stop tryna take my food.

    Its also considered rude to ask if you can join their meal. If you dont get invited to eat. Take the hint, its your que to go home. And it would be really awkward if you dont initiate that yourself.

    This varies ofcourse but in general this is how it is.

  5. Things might change over time but

    As a kid:

    Some families offered food, others didn’t. Nothing weird about either. Some families seemed to have very rigid meal times and that was “family time” unless it was a special occasion or weekend. The ones that would offer you food the most were the more laxed families. Still, both families assumed chances were good you already had dinner or was about to go home and have dinner.

    Adult:

    Totally depends on setting. Pre-party? Everybody ate before they arrived as it’s mostly drinks and snacks. Birthday, any kind of celebration, dinner might be the main celebration followed by coffee and cakes/drinks. National day and extended relatives get-togethers, everybody brings food.

    I guess this is weird, but IMO all options are open. As a picky kid I could pretend to have already had dinner if I could smell something I feared I would struggle with. My buddy having dinner would give me the computer all to my self so it was just bonus time. 😀

  8. I feel like I’ve stepped into some kind of bizarro-Norway reading some of these comments. Growing up (small town, 90s) I don’t recall ever not being invited to eat if I was at a friend’s place at dinner time. And my mother always made sure everyone was fed when I had friends over. The thought of children not getting food when they’re visiting a friend and food is being served is absurd to me.

  9. As a kid of the 80s and 90s feeding *dinner* to visiting kids where definitely not a common thing. Cellphones where not a thing and kids where just expected to go home for their family’s designated dinner time so if anything feeding them before they went home would be disrespectful towards their parents (unless arrangements where made in advance naturally, someone sleeping over or living to far away to just run home for dinner would be fed more often than not, not even offering breakfast to someone sleeping over is downright weird (unless it was a “sneak visit” and the parents where not informed or something)).

    If someone has been over for hours after dinner it was not uncommon to offer a slice of bread and/or some fruit and something to drink though.

    When I was older teenage friends hanging out later in the day would regularly be offered sandwiches, fried snacks and such but I often found this embarrassing (I’m a cool independent young adult hanging with my cool friends, and oh boy here comes mom with milk and cookies treating us like babies).

  10. If I were to just randomly join someone home from school I would normally not get food, unless their mother knew mine, and then there would be a telephone call for them to synch. Not sure if there was any negotiation, but pretty sure the same friend would join me for dinner during the next week. Parents at other places would insist that I used the landline to call home when I joined home from school, just to tell her where I was, then get me to hand them the handset to them after. No idea what the discussion was at that point, I was 7-12 and off to play.

    My mother would feed most (all?) kids that came to visit at our place, but I lived a fair bit away from school, so it was never at dinner time. As it is super awkward to eat dinner with other peoples parents, my mother would usually make sandwiches and bring them to us rather than having my friend endure sitting in the kitchen. Some kids would turn down the food too.

    If I were to not go directly home from school to eat dinner, do homework and stuff, my mother would also tell me off for disappearing.

    But getting food when just at a neighbours place? Very rarely. I would normally get told “we are going to eat soon, your mother is probably waiting for you”, and that would be my cue to leave. The one time they did not do that, I am pretty sure the mother did it as a demonstration because my mother had fed my friend the last week, and he had probably been talking about it. It was spaghetti. Just spaghetti, no sauce.

    But I mean, being at other peoples houses at dinnertime is pretty strange to begin with, as you are supposed to go home for homework after school anyway, and normally dinner would be eaten five minutes after I came home, around three. (unless it was the weekend and we were watching TV in the evening and having a treat type dinner like tacos or pizza). Evening meal would be served before bedtime, so the friend would have left by then.

    It all depends on the level of “visit”, really. If the mothers had talked, and we did not just turn up two kids at dinnertime when the food is already done, it would be fine.

    I am pretty sure some of this discussion boils down to routines, If you cross reference the “share food” map with “time for dinner” maps ([couple months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/tdo2gt/the_usual_time_of_eating_dinner_in_europe/)) ([couple years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/e00fvl/every_countrys_average_dinner_time_with_family_in/)), there are obvious correlations. Scandis eat at 3-4, and have little food sharing culture, while Mediterraneans eat at 7-9 and have a big sharing culture. I am pretty sure the Mediterranean kids also go home after school to do homework, but then do not eat until four or five hours later, while Scandi kids eat directly when home from school. This would lead to kids being at other peoples houses “at dinnertime” at a much higher rate.

  11. I was never allowed to visit friends until after dinner, and this was the general rule.

    So the problem of the hungry guest never presented itself.

  12. Very accurate except for my family or ethnic familys. It was pretty much common knowledge that in our house my friends got fed and could help themself. I did not really realize how weird that was until later when I had new friends over and they were shocked when my other friends just went in the fridge and took what they wanted. And we had a whole discussion about it and we all realized that it was not the norm at all😂 However growing up we mostly always gathered or had sleepovers in my house so we never really thought about the few times we were other places and did not get food. I can only remember a few times at a friends house where I was told to wait in the room while they ate dinner.
    But it makes sense thinking about other familys/parents that never really had people over and if they did it had to be very preplanned. While in my case I would bring people home every day pretty much so ofcourse we all ate.

    Looking back it all makes sense now when everytime I made a new friend they were borderline scared to ask for a glass of water and I looked at them dumb as fuck being like why would you not be allowed that?? Go get yourself water you know where the kitchen is😭And no we were not rich at all, but we made sure guests was fed. Definitely one thing I would say could change about nordic culture. It feels so bizarre for me the thought of telling my friends to sit in a room while I go eat. Even the few times I went to two of my ethnic friends house which looking back they were poor as shit, they made sure to feed me. To be honest it must have been a bit embarrassing for parents that knew that their child always got fed at my house knowing they did not do the same the few times I went over😩 I can remember friends parents calling to ask if they came home for dinner and they would answer no I am eating here.

  13. Was just having this discussion with my mom, and we came to the conclusion that feeding everyone is a more common tradition in the country side amongst older people, and not so much with younger people and people in cities. I don’t know, but in my family we’ve always put out food, or at least cake, if people come over. So I feel like I have to offer guests something, but it depends. I have a few friends that come over a lot and I don’t offer them anything, they know they can ask, or just grab something or whatever. But strangers or people I see rarely I’d offer something, not sure if that’s the norm or if we’re just weird though. It would feel kinda lame to me to just offer them tea or coffee or a drink, it sort of has to be something to eat.

    Edit: I didn’t notice this was specifically about children, I was looking at another study that shows we don’t offer anyone food. Who the hell wouldn’t feed their kids friends? People that think that’s okay need to get slapped. I always got food whenever I visited my friends as a child, and they always got fed by my parents. If that’s not the norm I’m changing my nationality.

  14. It is really insane how Twitter and Reddit, and now Newsweek just take a silly Instagram post without sources as something reliable.

    The only source quoted in the Instagram post is a Vice article, that only talks about Dutch habits, and also have no sources.

    (And ethnic Norwegian here, I grew up with if somebody was in our house they were offered food and drinks, and as an adult, if there are other kids than my own around dinner, they will be fed. This is so silly.)

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