SwedishShorts

Starbucks to Sweden. Fewer children die in accidents. Life’s puzzle harder for dads. 

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  Starbucks, well-known in the U.S., is coming to Sweden.

• Starbucks to Sweden
  The American coffee chain Starbucks is ready to pick up the fight for latte customers in Sweden, opening 50 coffee shops around the country. Espresso House and Wayne’s Coffee, two Swedish coffee chains, have expanded heavily in the past years but now they will have to buckle up. ”When we have opened a few coffee shops in Stockholm, we want to move on to other cities. It could be Göteborg, Malmö or Lund and smaller places also,” says director for Starbucks in Sweden Johan Rosenblom, to the magazine Fastighetsvärlden. Today Starbucks has about 21,000 coffee shops around the world. In Sweden, there are currently Starbucks at Arlanda Airport and at two train stations. Though the article in the magazine reports 50 Starbucks coffee shops are scheduled to open in Swedish cities, Rosenholm won’t confirm that. ”I don’t comment on numbers, but we plan for a powerful expansion and we expect to open the first (Starbucks) during 2014,” he says.

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  Swedish fathers feel the conflict between family and work much more severly than Swedish mothers, and more than men in other countries, according to an international study. Fortunately, a shorter work day - which leaves more time for family - may become the norm in Sweden.

• Fewer children die in accidents
  Fewer children die in accidents in Sweden today, compared to 15 years ago, according to fresh numbers from Statistics Sweden. In 1998, 556 children died in accidents, whereas 438 died in accidents in 2012.

• Life’s puzzle harder for dads
  As parents, dads have a much harder time than moms piecing together the puzzle pieces of life with children. This is from a new study on how equality in a society affects the work-family balance. Swedish men are torn between the demands of work and the expectations that they should also take on equal responsibilities as fathers. The work-family conflict is experienced more significantly by dads. Melbourne University sociology researchers Leah Ruppanner and Matt L. Huffman polled people over age 18 in 31 countries on how they feel they manage in combining family life with work. In more equal societies, the difference between women’s and men’s stress experiences aren’t that great. This is where Sweden stands out. In Sweden, men experience a greater conflict between work and family than do women. Says Leah Ruppanner: ”Swedish mothers have higher demands on their men, wanting them to take on a greater responsibility, since there are institutions that support them, regardless of civil status. There’s also a broader support for equality between the genders, which leads to men who don’t take responsibility for their families being judged more severely by their surroundings.” But according to gender researcher Cecilia Nahnfeldt at Karlstad University, these differences are just temporary in nature: ”That fathers should have the same responsibility is a fairly new social notion. The men haven’t been at it as long and aren’t as experienced. Practice makes perfect.”