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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: spiral3 who wrote (143653)	8/19/2004 10:46:13 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

So many of the most intimate things we take for granted differ widely from culture to culture. Do you remember when everybody freaked out because some Scandinavians left their baby in the baby carriage outside a restaurant while they ate? It's considered perfectly normal where they're from, but here it's child abuse. One of the issues I deal with on the job is sleeping arrangements, who sleeps in the same bed and bedroom with whom. There are so many different cultures here that we've all gotten used to the idea of the family bed, that it's culturally acceptable for small children to sleep in the same bed as the parents, but I don't think we really know very much about what that actually means from culture to culture. We probably don't want to know. My father was aghast when a very nice father and daughter visiting the household from Honduras shared the same bed -- the daughter was in her teens! I had no idea whether that was strange or not but my step-grandmother, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, thought it was OK. The rest of us were never sure. I have a case where the parents are separated, and the mother is living with her boyfriend in a one bedroom apartment. The mother lets the son sleep in her bed when he visits, while the boyfriend sleeps on the floor! She's American, the husband is from Brazil, and I am more upset about it than either of them. I said, at least put the child on the sofa in the living room, and the mother said, Oh, no, I would never put my child on the sofa! He deserves a real bed. I will put my boyfriend on the sofa. People. I just don't understand them.