babies in the streets

One major thing you notice when you come to Iceland is there are a lot of babies here and a lot of pregnant women. More than what you normally see in any major city. They seem to have a completely different view of child rearing here and I find it quite neat. I find that back home when you get pregnant your life practically stops for a few months or years while you go through the stages of pregnancy and then have the baby. Most girls seem to drop out of school to take care the child, most go on maturnity leave when the baby is born and there are the few that never go back to work once they have a child (though I think now most women do work, or they need to work).

Here the women are still quite active even when noticeably pregnant. They go out, have fun, go swimming, go hiking (no partying of course) and are just living. When the babies are born they still go out, you see a lot of mothers with their strollers on the streets or carryin their babies (you even see a lot of carriages left outside stores or houses, sometimes with the babies still in them, while the mother is inside). Another thing is the fathers seem to have a major part in the baby´s life as well. Many times now I have seen just fathers walking down streets with the baby carriages. Family seems like a very important part of their lives here.

I actually have to write two papers on icelandic culture and I am thinking I might do one on the nurturing of children in Iceland, and perhaps a comparative study with Canadian culture. Might be interesting.