An American mom living in Sweden shares her adventures (good and bad) on social media, sharing insight into what it’s like to be a mom and raise kids in a foreign country. While there are certainly some major differences, some of the biggest shocks have come from the daycare services in Sweden compared to America, especially in cost.
“I have a two-year-old, and I just moved from the US to Sweden about six months ago, so let’s talk about daycare differences,” Courtney begins.
“In the US, she went three days a week, and we paid $1,650. With that monthly fee, they did not provide diapers. They did not provide food. We had to send her with every single meal for the day, and they wouldn’t even warm up her lunch, so we literally had to warm her food and put it in a Thermos so that it would be warm for her by the time lunch rolled around. The teachers in the daycare, they don’t really have any required education.”
Then she moves on to how Swedish daycare compares, and the differences are stark.
“Now let’s talk about her daycare in Sweden. We pay about 120 US dollars every month. She goes three days a week as well. She gets a warm cooked meal every single day for lunch and two snacks. They also provide diapers,” she says.
“I remember asking them about bringing diapers, and they were like, ‘No, no, you don’t need to bring diapers.’ We provide them’ … Also, to work in a daycare in Sweden, you do have to have some kind of education.”
She also mentions some cultural differences between American daycare and Swedish daycare.
Courtney continued, “I also just remember that during the orientation, like the first day we took our daughter to the preschoole in the States, we asked them if we could like ease her into it, bring her for a day and they were like, ‘No, it’s kind of just like a hard drop off and say goodbye.’”
“In Sweden, they offered us three days where we went to the school with her. She could kind of get used to the people and the routines while she also had us with her, and I feel like that definitely helped with the transition. All in all, I am very grateful to have my daughter in a safe daycare here in Sweden…”
Comments on the OP’s post were what you’d expect from American followers.
“The new American dream is to move to another country,” one user wrote.
Another said, “And kids in [S]weden do not need to have a bulletproof backpack 🙄🙄”
Another mom living out of the U.S. wrote, “We are in Bulgaria, in my city for my kids [I] pay 0$. The day care is 5 days in week. Everything is pay from the country. With 4 meal a day, they cook there, for fresh food”
One mom said, “Welcome to Sweden 🇸🇪 [I] used to live in the US, and had 3 kids in the US. I hated the daycare and school in the US. They did not even go outside from November-March. In [S]weden they got everything u say and loved being outside all year long.”
Now, let’s take a deep breath together before we start googling how to move to Europe…
