Tuesday 4 June 2013

Nordic babies - sleep in cardboard boxes and snap in sub-zero temperatures

 

My latest blogpost: Nordic babies - sleep in cardboard boxes and snap in sub-zero temperaturesTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 11:36

14 comments:

Kj said...

The truth is that finnish children are actually delivered from Kela in cardboard boxes. Or you can take the grant instead.

4 June 2013 at 13:02
mombers said...

Great that they got rid of means testing in 1949

4 June 2013 at 15:14
Anonymous said...

Kj, that sounds like a very efficient system. In the UK, it is storks who deliver babies, which sounds a bit messy and dangerous.

M, call me a sentimental old fool, but when I read the article this morning I nearly cried. That's how important the concept of universal benefits is to me.

4 June 2013 at 15:24
Bayard said...

No wonder so many Finns are emigrating: they obviously can't stand the thought of all those rich mothers getting free cardboard boxes that could perfectly well afford to pay for.

4 June 2013 at 17:28
Kj said...

I think most people in Finland would afford the contents anyway, and they also have child benefit. But it probably costs very little to provide these boxes, all of it is universally needed by newborns, and the very few that might have a hard time putting this together, will have it, so why not.
*I don't know the deal with the condoms though, are they trying to convey a message here?

4 June 2013 at 18:48
Mark Wadsworth said...

B, are they, or did you make that up?

Kj, I don't understand the condoms either. They should persuade the new mums to breast feed as long as possible and that works just as well as using condoms. And it's better for babies.

4 June 2013 at 20:07
Bayard said...

M, I read that the majority of immigrants to Sweden are Finns, but someone else could have made that up: I can't vouch for its veracity.
I've also been told that breast-feeding as contraception is much less reliable than condoms, which is a shame.

4 June 2013 at 22:12
Kj said...

B: it's true, but largely because of immigration that occured many decades ago, between WW2 and the 70s.

4 June 2013 at 23:04
Mark Wadsworth said...

B, Kj, we've gone round the clock of silliness here.

Are you seriously saying that immigration is to blame for the fact that breast feeding does not prevent conception any more?

4 June 2013 at 23:14
Sarton Bander said...

What's Zeik Heil in Finish?

4 June 2013 at 23:32
Kj said...

MW: No, but maybe the Finns emigrated back in the day because they got crap baby boxes. This site says; "Frequent and regular breastfeeding as a form of contraception is known as the lactational amenorrhoea method (LAM). LAM is said to be more than 98 per cent effective."
If there is any backing to that claim, that's pretty high. Breastfeeding as a contraception "method" is funny though.

5 June 2013 at 00:13
Mark Wadsworth said...

SB, another weird comment which tells me that you are getting increasingly nasty and authoritarian.

Kj, how effective it is depends on who says it. Men will say it's 99% effective, women say it's only 90% effective.

5 June 2013 at 07:21
Derek said...

The effectiveness depends upon the frequency. To get 99% effectiveness, the mother needs to be feeding a lot and not all mothers are that fond of being suckled. Some love it, some like it, some don't. That's why the Finns include condoms in the box, I suppose.

5 June 2013 at 08:33
Kj said...

Never afraid to be slightly paternalistic when it comes to procreation up in the Nordics. Their western neighbour even offers free sterilization if you're having an elective caesarian (the former is usually around 900£), like a two-for-(n)one. "While we're in there"...

5 June 2013 at 08:47

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