Swedish Family Life, and The problem of Aging in Georgia

Families :

Would you like a  unisex marriage- with husband and wife sharing housework and breadwinning ? I can only report that Swedish wives flourish on it.

They are outward-looking, and a conversation with them is likely to be about their work, hobbies or families. It is scarcely every about what so and so said to offend them, or what women's place in society ought to be.

They are enthusiastic in all kinds of ways. During the three years I lived in Sweden while my husband was working there, I repeatedly heard how much Swedish wives appreciated and enjoyed their families and homes because they were away from them for some of the time in their own careers.

The average Swede, though tall and handsome, doesn't spend much time paying a woman compliments. Perhaps this is because he is quite prepared to threat her as an equal.

When a young couple marry they don't take it for granted that the husband is the breadwinner, and the wife the housekeeper.

They have a flexible approach, sharing out the work and chore in a way which suits them. No one criticizes them if they reverse their traditional roles.

As Katerina, a Swedish wife, explained to me : "Stefan and I have known each other since childhood. We went to same kind of school, and we both trained as dentists, so why should only one of us have a career ?"

A doctor who works in a Child Care Department thought that women had a right to work and to support themselves.

"I can understand a woman who prefers housework to factory work, but I just cannot understand an educated woman who doesn't work."

"When we married I was studying," a woman psychiatrist told me "And, of course, when I qualified, I started to practise," she could not imagine training and then not using her vital skills.

Nor is it only professional women who expect to work. The girl who came to clean my house told me that her husband was a postman.

He's up early, and then he comes home early in the afternoon and looks after the baby while I go out to work."

Increasingly, the Swedish husband accepts that house-hold chores are partly his responsibility.