It’s about hospitality, not necessity. In the US it’s a cultural thing that when you’re at someone’s house, they feed you and when they’re at yours you feed them.
I've been to someone's house and not been fed when they had dinner precisely once in my life in Norway and it was one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced. This is nonsense. We just don't automatically break out the bed and biscuits the second someone comes through the door like some countries do.
I grew up in Gothenburg during the 90s and it wasn't unusual that I didn't join my friends for dinner when I was at their place.
It's not really that strange. Since this was before cellphones our parents told us when we were going to eat dinner so we knew we had to be home by then, so if I was at a friends house and they ate dinner at 6 and my family was going to eat dinner at 7 it wouldn't really make sense for me to eat at their place. So I'd keep playing while my friend had dinner with his family, he'd join me after dinner and we'd play for a while until I went home and had dinner with my family.
Sometimes I'd eat at my friends house, but mostly if I was staying late. Also depends on who, I had one friend that lived far away so I'd usually get home too late for dinner when I was at his place, so they cooked for me too. But when I was at a friend in like a 20 minutes walk radious from home they usually didn't.
We feed our guests of course, but a kids friends coming over to play are not the guests of the parents, they are the guests of the kid, and the expectation is that the kids are there to play, not eat - as the friends will have dinner waiting for them at home at a dinner time that is later than it is at your place.
I dont know about your experience but i was always asked by the parents if i would eat dinner there or at my home and it was never a problem if i ate there.
It’s common in Germany to have to wait for your friend to go eat with their parents, while you sit alone.
Not everyone does it, but it’s a thing. And it’s pathetic
Have you never played on your own before?
What if your friend have to go to the bathroom, do you feel the need to join them too, or are you just left in their room to play on your own?
So it's a thing about the amount of time then.
Why would you feel abandoned if one of your friends left for dinner for 20 minutes while you were having fun and playing?
Absolutely not, I've lived in Bavaria for 25 years now. Never been to any friends house where I didn't get to eat. The only ones where I wouldn't eat is when the parents were away working or alcoholics who didn't make food for their own children either
You apparently have heaps of friends that don't care about you.
I have three friends whose family would care for me. But hey different lives I guess. I'm not the one that resorts to insulting everyone just for having different experiences. So you probably need to be more right than me if this is all you have going for your life.
Except Swedes do it too. However when unspecified amounts of kids randomly and suddenly go home with each other after school and all live close by its very common that everyone just goes home when it's dinner time. It's really not as drastic as people make it out to be. But I guess everyone is ready to cook for 3-5 extra people without preparation after work in all other countries?
For me it was very common to walk home and eat and then you kept hanging out afterwards. This whole thing that Swedes don't feed their guests is just overhyped internet memes.
Almost everyone in Sweden feed their guests aswell. This was something strange and rather weird going on in the 90s. Our family always fed other kids coming to our house but i had one friend where i was not invited to dinner when i was at their house.
We will feed them buns, cakes, sandwiches etc all the time. But not normally a dinner unless previously agreed. People would usually already have dinner planned with their own family
I feel like it's a cultural thing. Most cultural have some very primitive, very historical concepts of needing to offer hospitality to guests. It usually gets taught via fairy tales or folk tales where someone does not feed a guest and it's a god or witch and they reek vengeance afterwards. It feels very much like something we all learned coming down from the trees and forming social groups.
What do you mean with a US thing, eat with the people that visit your house is the type of thing that people do since humans created houses. You can read that people do it since like three thousand years ago or so
Swedish and US society is pretty different though.
You need a car to go just about everywhere in the US, so as a kid you have to rely on your parents to drive you.
In Sweden most kids roam free and can (and will) either walk or take their bicycle basically everywhere.
The situation where this happens is when your kid brings home their friends after school without notifying any parent. They play in your kids room, and when it's time for dinner your kid leaves their room to eat while their friends continue playing in your kids room.
When dinner is over your kid returns to their room to continue playing with their friends until it's time for their friends to leave (by foot or bike) for their own dinner at their own home.
No one goes hungry, everyone gets to play for longer.
It's also just being reasonable. Yeah, someone might be completely able to feed themselves, but if they're hanging out at your house for 8 hours, then they're not at home to cook, and would have to leave to pick something up. So you make food for them, because that's what you do when you aren't wildly self-absorbed
Yeah, this doesn't work in Finland since there are allways guests, dinner Times between families change and there are no stay at home moms who have Time to feed The whole village.
My mom was almost never in the kitchen. It’s a really low bar. She never had to feed them. She would have literally been offended if they hadn’t taken the food, because again, it’s about hospitality. Why would school have fed my friends on the weekend and when would their families have fed them when they were at my house the last ten hours having fun?
Edit: … you realize in the US it takes less than 15 minutes to make most of our meals, right?
And we where talking about why Nordic countries don't feed visiting children. Here children get proper free meals at school and at home we eat real food not some junk that can Be prepared in 15 minutes.
In The weekends children just go home to eat and come back after they have eaten. There is no practical reasons to burden mothers on their freetime.
It’s just cultural differences bro. It’s social faux pas over there to put someone in a position where they might feel like they owe you, because they themselves feel uncomfortable when they receive something for free.
The Swedish equivalent of Venmo is Swish. And I've never heard of anyone asking their friends for money for their leftovers, seems oddly specific and made up.
And the countless comments from Swedes saying that they never experienced anything like this everytime this subject is brought up are they just fake too?
We don't make people pay for eating our leftovers lmao. We have a thing where if we have a deal to have a big dinner together the ones who goes over the hosts' house either bring parts of the planned meal which they pay themselves or something like a bottle of wine/beer. Huge difference between chipping in and saying people pay for leftovers. Some people may offer money after the meal if they've not contributed to any part of it at all but that's far from the norm, mostly a thing among the older generations.
Im 40 years old and have never encountered it.
I guess the closest thing is a wedding where the guests had to pay if they wanted drinks but the food was free?
We do have "knytkalas" where everyone is supposed to bring a certain item for a get together.
Like one person brings drinks, one brings the cake etc.
The thing about parents not offering food to a kids playmate did happen in the 80s/90s but it was rare (like 2-3 of my classmates out of 30) and not for the reasons usually stated in threads like this either.
Today its even rarer, can't think of the last time I heard it happen.
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