There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

The researchers brought this shift to light through a series of experiments in which participants were asked to judge the level of risk associated with leaving a child unsupervised in five different hypothetical scenarios. The ages of the children and the circumstances during which they were left were the same in all the studies, but the parent’s reason for leaving the child varied. In some cases, the hypothetical parent had left the child unintentionally or to go to work, in other cases to relax or to rendezvous with a secret lover. As it turned out, participants consistently rated the situation as more dangerous to the child when the reason for the parent’s absence was deemed morally unacceptable—for example, seeing a lover. “People don’t only think that leaving children alone is dangerous and therefore immoral.