I enjoyed reading your story about parenting in Norway: (How to be a Norwegian parent: let your kids roam free, stay home alone, have fun – and fail, 11 July). As parents from India and the US who have brought up a toddler in Stavanger and are moving to Oslo this summer, we love the child‑centric family lifestyle that Norway enables.
With two active working parents with demanding jobs, and grandparents who live 7,000km away east or west, our daughter enjoys amazing kindergarten experiences, camaraderie with neighbours and their children in our sustainable collective called Vindmøllebakken (where 60 to 70 people in 40 households live together), and even a wonderful young children’s theatre in our neighbourhood.
When we move to Oslo, our nearest neighbour will be the “garden city” of Kampen Hageby, which features an organic children’s farm near the centre of the capital. Our daughter is excited about getting to help take care of the resident pony, Blakken, named after the classic Norwegian children’s song called Fola Fola Blakken, a favourite of hers.
One thing that’s improving about childhood in Norway is a move away from forced car dependence. In most cities other than Oslo, public transport access has long been restrictive for young families to really thrive without a car, given historical building patterns with low density in the suburbs and children’s activities in places not always easy to reach by bus. But electric cargo bicycles and great cycling infrastructure combine to make this a viable, enjoyable and healthy way for families to get around hilly Norwegian landscapes.
We’ve enjoyed life with our electric bicycles and child seats in Stavanger, and look forward to even better connectivity with public and active transport to family recreation destinations around Oslo. When our daughter moves from kindergarten to the neighbourhood school in Oslo come 2027, she’ll doubtless walk over to it with her twin friends next door.
Prof Siddharth Sareen
Stavanger, Norway
• I was bought up on the small island of Stronsay in the Orkney isles, and had a childhood very similar to the one described here. I often thought it was just because the place was remote and rural – but perhaps the Norwegian roots of Orcadian culture contributed to the local attitudes towards children.
I have to contrast it to life in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where I live now. I left my then eight‑year‑old son in the local playground to get him a sandwich from a nearby coffee shop. I was away a maximum of 15 minutes. When I came back there was a furious lady, shouting at me, accusing me of being an irresponsible parent, and that people like me “end up being on the front page because they left their kid alone to be kidnapped”.
To gain even a little freedom for our children here in England necessitates leaving oneself open to blame and accusation from other parents.
Mark Weber
St Albans
• We lived in rural Germany in the early 2000s, during our kids’ kindergarten and primary school years, and I saw many similarities. From the age of six (or five, going on six in our daughter’s case) the kids went on the school bus and walked the last part of the journey by themselves, arriving shortly before the school opened, so they had to wait outside. But everyone’s children were doing that. Supposing some threat had presented itself, they wouldn’t have been alone.
I also recall dropping my daughter at a summer camp and seeing another child with an enormous knife, whittling a stick. I swallowed hard at that, imagining all sorts of horrible tripping accidents. But I did say goodbye and leave.
Kindergarten activities included free range days in the nearby forest, and milking cows. So far as I know, nobody ever got lost or trodden on by the cows … I saw all this as very positive experience.
Helen Grant
Crieff, Perthshire
• It’s interesting to note how Norwegian parents place such an emphasis on independence. In their book Love, Money & Parenting, Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti give insight into the values adopted by different countries, including the UK, with striking findings. In high-inequality countries, many parents prioritise hard work over independence and imagination, both of which are held in higher regard in low-inequality countries such as the Nordic nations.
However, with rising wealth inequality in the UK, where the top 10% of the population owns 57% of the wealth, one would be forgiven for questioning the value of hard work.
Perhaps a more accurate question should be how will the new Labour government address equal access and outcomes in higher education, bridge income inequality and ensure fair and decent work so that all children can flourish in the future regardless of parenting values?
Lesley Bentley
London
• To continue with what has changed (Letters, 12 July), in the summers of 1967 and 1968 (aged 11 and 12), at 11am, my parents sat me on the boundary of Scarborough cricket ground to watch England v Rest of the World (yes), with a sandwich and something to drink. At 6.30pm they picked me up. I still remember getting Garry Sobers’s, Lance Gibbs’s and Wes Hall’s autographs. A shame this trust in others seems to have been lost.
Alan Walker
Torrelodones, Madrid, Spain
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