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Joy

A closed Swedish library left its door open. The community reacted with pure goodness.

Now, that's what community means.

via Google

People reading at the Gothenburg City Library in Sweden.

Basketball coaching legend John Wooden once famously said, "The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching," and he has a great point. It’s one thing to do what’s right when you are afraid you’ll be punished for doing the wrong thing by an authority figure. It’s another to do the right thing because your peers will applaud you.

But the highest moral good is doing what’s right when no one is watching because that’s doing good for its own sake.

A story out of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that in that community, the patrons of its library know a little something about doing good just because it’s the right thing to do.

On November 4, the Gothenburg City Library was closed for All Saints Day. The day is a holiday dedicated to remembering loved ones who passed by lighting a candle on their graves, or spending time with family and having a festive meal.

The City Library was scheduled to be closed for the holiday, but one of the employees forgot to lock the building door. So, being that it was a Saturday, hundreds of people flocked to the library to check out books, read magazines, surf the internet, or play video games.

gothenburg sweden, libraries, kindness

Bike parking at the Gothenburg City Library in Sweden.

via Johannes Ortner/Flickr

Library employee Anna Carin Elf was in the neighborhood and was shocked to see people walking in and out of the library when it was supposed to be closed. Even though it wasn’t supposed to be open, the people in the library just went about their business as if it was a typical day.

“They were surprised. They thought it was a bit empty,” Elf said, according to ZME Science. “The people in the library behaved as usual. Many were sitting reading newspapers, some families were in the children’s section and others were searching for books on the computer.”

Elf contacted her boss and another colleague and told everyone in the library that the building was closed. The patrons closed up their books and went home. But some left with books for some weekend reading.

The librarians later did a tally and found that 446 people visited the library on All Saints Day and 246 books were borrowed. Surprisingly, all of the books were returned within 5 days. "Nothing was destroyed. It's amazing that Gothenburgers enter an empty library and treat it so lovingly," Elf told The Local.

Through that act, the people of Gothenburg showed us what community spirit is all about. Their collective honesty is a beautiful indicator of their love for their library, its resources and their fellow citizens. Because when you rob a library, you’re stealing from your community.

The story is a powerful reminder to people all over the world of how we should view our public libraries. They aren’t just buildings but a crucial part of our community, a hub of learning and a symbol of our trust in each other.

It also proves the old Iraqi proverb: “The reader does not steal, and the thief does not read.”


This article originally appeared on 11.9.23


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Family

Sweden's parental leave laws have revolutionized the lives of moms.

Science doesn't lie. Moms need help.

It turns out mothers recover from childbirth faster when they don't have to go it alone. Shocker, right?

Anyone who's ever had a baby or has been around someone who's had a baby can tell you that new mothers need help. But sometimes it takes science to point out the obvious. There have been studies showing the importance of a newborn spending time with its father. It improves the health of the baby and strengthens the bond between baby and dad. But a new study found that having a co-parent on hand can make a big difference in how mom feels.



Parents in Sweden get 16 months paid time off when they have a baby. Both parents share that allotted time, and they can divide it as they see fit.

Researchers at Stanford University took a look at the effects of a change in Swedish parental leave. Up until 2012, parents couldn't take the time off at the same time, except for the first 10 days after the baby was born. Often, mothers would be left alone with their child for 14 months, and the father would be alone with the child for two.

But in 2012, the restriction was lifted, and the parent who didn't give birth is now allowed to take 30 days of time off while the parent who gave birth is taking their leave, too.

It ended up having a big impact. It turns out, when both parents are there, the health of the mother improves.

The researchers found that six months after postpartum, anti-anxiety prescriptions decreased by 26%, hospitalizations or visits to a specialist decreased by 14%, and antibiotic prescriptions decreased by 11%. That's not too shabby.


Women shouldn't be expected to pop out a baby, then get told, "Good luck with that!" as they're left alone to figure it all out. "A lot of focus has been on what we can do in the hospital immediately following childbirth, but less on mothers' home environment, which is where the vast majority of women spend most of their postpartum time," Maya Rossin-Slater, one of the researchers, said. "What we're saying is one important component of that home environment is the presence of the father or another adult caretaker."

The restriction was changed to encourage more early father-child bonding time because of how important it was. The fact that it ended up improving the mother's health was a pleasant surprise.

What's not a surprise? That the study recommends that more countries should offer familial leave the way they do in Sweden.

"While paid leave for new parents is nearly ubiquitous in most of the developed world (with the important exception of the United States), family care leave is much less common," the study says. "Our results suggest that the availability of such leave — which fathers could use to care for mothers in the immediate postpartum period — could have important and previously uncalculated benefits for families."

Of course, America might need to start with, you know, offering familial leave at all.


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Sweden is really good at gender equality. This kindergarten is an example of why.

Gender madness starts when you let skeletons do the dishes.

Dolls ride dinosaurs into battle, dump trucks haul colorful bracelets, and fire-breathing dragons loom over wooden train stations.

This is what an average day looks like on the playroom floor at Egalia, a kindergarten in Stockholm, Sweden.

Kids play at Egalia in 2011. Photo by Fredrik Sandberg/AP/Scanpix Sweden.

Egalia is a place where gender neutrality is worked into every level of learning. Including, yes, the toys.

Sweden is often held up as an example of gender equality; the World Economic Forum rated them as having the fourth smallest gender gap in the world, after all.

In 1998, the government passed an amendment pushing for more gender-neutral practices in schools. Lotta Rajalin — a preschool administrator — took the idea and ran with it. In 2011, she and a group of colleagues opened up Egalia.

Walking in the door, you might notice some simple changes. Toys are de-segregated, for instance; dinosaurs, dolls, and motorcycles all end up in the same bin. The books lining the walls are more modern tales rather than old-fashioned stories of knights and princesses.

The biggest change is probably in the teachers themselves.

Egalia has made a point to hire more male teachers. They're careful not to tell boys to "suck it up" after a fall or tell girls it's not appropriate to be rambunctious — expectations they themselves admit to harboring in the past.

Even the language they use is different. In the Swedish language, there are two typically used pronouns: "han" for "him" and "hon" for "her." But when it comes to jobs and roles, Egalia has also embraced the somewhat more obscure gender-neutral "hen."

They also make sure this linguistic care extends to group activities as well.

"We don’t say, 'Come on, boys, let’s go and play football,' because there might be girls who want to play football," school coordinator Frida Wikström told The Guardian. "We say 'friends' instead because it puts yourself on an equal level."

The school isn't trying to get rid of gender. It's gender-neutral, not gender-blind.

[rebelmouse-image 19528613 dam="1" original_size="332x500" caption="A pair of "emotion dolls" at Egalia. Photo by Fredrik Sandberg/AP/Scanpix Sweden." expand=1]A pair of "emotion dolls" at Egalia. Photo by Fredrik Sandberg/AP/Scanpix Sweden.

Critics have labelled the project as "gender-madness," accusing the school of trying to brainwash the kids into a genderless homogeneity. Egalia's not trying to do that. Gender is an important part of people's identities, and the kids are free to embrace those differences.

But it's also true genders can come with a lot of baggage. Science shows that pretty much as soon as kids understand that different genders exist, expectations and stereotypes start to creep in. When teachers and other adults talk, kids listen.

When teachers change the way they talk, kids change too. A small study from Sweden's Uppsala University hints that while Egalia's kids were just as able to categorize different genders compared with other kids their age, they were also more likely to play with kids of different genders and less likely to assign stereotypes.

Gender is a complex subject. We still have a long way to go socially and even more to study. But when it comes to just letting kids play the way they want, without stereotypes bearing down on them, that seems pretty sane.

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Heroes

A hilarious commercial in Sweden is getting people hyped about public transport.

Sweden has been working on an exciting new technology, dubbed "The Future of Mobility."

Imagine climbing into your car, only now you can stretch your legs comfortably in the roomy cabin. Instead of fighting reckless drivers and morning traffic, you can whip open your phone or laptop, catch up on work, or just zone out, and be sure you'll show up at your destination safe and sound.

And all of that without feeling guilty about polluting the ozone.

It's not just a fantasy anymore. Behold:

Yes, the future of transportation in Sweden is ... a bus.

But it might not be as silly as it sounds.

The clever ad comes from Swedish public transport agency Västtrafik, which wants to encourage more commuters to take the bus (or train) instead of clogging the road with cars. In addition to the ad campaign, Västtrafik is also offering riders two weeks of free public transit to show them how great it can be.

Obviously, public transport isn't a good fit for everyone, especially those who live or work outside major urban centers. But according to a press release, Västtrafik expects to gain over 5,000 new regular riders from the experiment.

Sweden hopes to be "climate neutral" by 2050, and getting more cars off the road is a big part of the plan.

Photo by Erik Martensson/AFP/Getty Images.

We've seen lots of small islands and isolated communities completely wean themselves off fossil fuels, but for a developed nation like Sweden to do it would be a massive feat.

One of the biggest challenges will be to cut the country's carbon emissions — about a third of which come from domestic travel, according to Västtrafik. Frankly, it just makes sense.

"A normal car in Sweden stands still for 97 percent of its lifetime and for every car there are eight parking spaces and many miles of road," said Sweden's environment minister, Karolina Skog. "You can't call that effective."

The country already gets the majority of its energy from renewable sources wind, and it's working on making its fleet of buses and trains even more energy efficient.

Thanks, Sweden, for showing the rest of the world what climate-conscious policy should look like.

Not all nations believe the interests of its people and the planet can be served at the same time, but you have to wonder if they might be singing a different tune as the impact of climate change becomes more severe.

The more of us who are willing to get involved and (gasp!) maybe sit next to another human being on our morning commute, the better chance we have at slowing down this "runaway bus."

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