Here’s How Parenting Works In Sweden

Basically, the government is in charge.

According to that source link, a couple has been sentenced to nine months EACH in prison and also fined because they spank their kids. Corporal punishment has been outlawed, you see, since 1979 in Sweden. Perhaps next, parents will be forbidden to raise their voices at their children too, because the government wouldn’t want Swedish children to suffer from any “verbal abuse” right?

The court noted, by the way, in the very documents which order the parents to jail, that the parents “had a loving and caring relationship with their children.” There was no abuse. But that didn’t stop the government from sending them to jail, and remanding the kids to foster care. According to the Director of International Relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association, it is “extremely unlikely” that the kids will EVER be returned to the parents, with whom they enjoyed that loving and caring relationship.

That same director said this is a common story in Sweden with families who hold traditional values about child-rearing. He said, “Parenting has been outsourced, or simply directly taken over by the state in Sweden. And these parents have been jailed for doing what in America would be perfectly normal.”

Oh, and guess what else is illegal in Sweden? Homeschooling. And there’s a famous case about a boy named Domenic Johannson who was also taken from his family because they had the NERVE to want to homeschool him. He was taken away, you guys.

For the past couple of decades, corporal punishment has gotten a pretty bad rap here in the states (although we’ve not sunk to Swedish depths….yet). I’m fortunate, in that I’m blessed with a 5 year old who is basically the most well-behaved child I’ve ever known, but if he were the kind of kid who needed a spanking and would respond to a swat on the butt? I’d have no problem giving him one. And I’ve seen PLENTY of kids in stores who were basically BEGGING to be spanked.

The people who are all soft and touchy-feely about it go way too far when they say spanking is the same as abuse. Do some parents who spank abuse their kids? Sure. But there is a marked difference between abuse and spanking as discipline. Spanking shouldn’t be a daily discipline tool, but used sparingly and when really warranted, it can be effective. I can point to many many many many many of my friends, who are from my generation when spanking was far more commonplace, as evidence. They’re well-adjusted adults, who enjoy close relationships with their parents, and aren’t permanently scarred from a few swats on the butt.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, if you’d like to Actually Parent, and not have the government raise your kids, stay out of Sweden. Because that country, viewed by many liberals as a socialist utopia, is proof that “a government strong enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take away everything you have.”