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 Scandinavian practice of parking prams with young babies outside all year-round dates back at least a century. At the time, the infant mortality rate was high and indoor air quality poor, and many children suffered from rickets and other diseases. In Finland, a well-known pediatrician named Arvo Ylppö, who is sometimes referred to as that country’s Dr. Benjamin Spock, set out to change all that. In the 1920s, he started to distribute childcare guidelines to new mothers, to improve the health and survival rates among infants. Among his many recommendations was to expose children to sunlight as well as fresh and cold air regularly to create “sound blood” and prevent diseases. Specifically, cold air was believed to increase immunity against bacteria by improving blood circulation in the linings of the nose and mouth. When Ylppö died in 1992, the infant mortality rate in Finland had fallen from 10 percent in 1920 to 0.6 percent, making it among the lowest rates in the world (as of 2015, it stood at 0.2 percent).