I recall reading decades ago that in Sweden, it’s common for a mother to drop her two kids off at the government provided daycare center and then drive to her job at a different government provided daycare center and look after other mothers’ kids all day. That way she knows her children are being looked after by well-paid Swedish women like her, she gets to exercise her maternal instincts at work, and she counts as being employed in the government statistics.
The article alleged that the system works because Swedes all trust each other to do a good job looking after each other’s kids because they are all trustworthy Swedes. (I don’t know what impact all the immigration since then has had on this attitude.)
Being an Italian mother, in contrast, is more work than being a Swedish mother, because Italians don’t trust other Italians as much (much less immigrants) to be good at childcare. And Italian mothers expect their sons to require a lot of care if they are going to grow up to be geniuses like Leonardo and Michelangelo, while Swedish mothers don’t expect that of their kids. Finally, Swedish wives trust their husbands/boyfriends not to leave them if they cut back on the effort they devote to cosmetics and hair care, while Italian wives don’t.
