Why Swedes Are Chiller Parents Than Americans
A new book looks at the wide variety of parenting styles around the world.
Fabrizio Zilibotti was born in Italy and met his wife (who’s Spanish) in London. Their daughter was born in Sweden, where she spent some of her childhood before the family moved to the U.K. and then Switzerland.
As he spent time in each of these countries, Zilibotti—who now lives in the U.S., teaching economics at Yale—became intrigued by the variety of parenting philosophies he encountered, from Sweden’s laissez-faire style of child-rearing to the U.K’s more rule-oriented approach. Parents in every country, he reasoned, loved their children more or less equally, so it seemed a little puzzling that they had such divergent ideas about what was best for their kids.
That puzzle is the impetus for , a new book
