The children were playing happily. I found a bench in the shade and settled down to relax with my coffee, scanning the Manhattan skyline when I heard the first “Sorry!” Another mother was apologizing to me and it caught me off guard. It was the first of many unnecessary apologies to fill the air of the plentiful playgrounds of Hoboken, N.J.

Since moving to Sweden in January 2012, we explore cities when we travel by bopping around playgrounds. While touring Hoboken in this manner in July 2015, I started to notice odd parental behavior and heard a seemingly excessive string of apologies from fellow mothers. It appeared that my mothers-in-arms were trying to keep things neat and orderly, apologizing when something wasn’t perfect, and thus stopping and redirecting their children’s play to something deemed socially acceptable by the mother. They were parenting on eggshells─afraid that my reaction, a stranger’s perspective, would result in some type of reprimand. Their pre-emptive apology was an attempt to smooth over any perceived wrongdoings by their children. The big thing was that I didn’t see anything wrong. All I saw were children playing happily at the playground─throwing sand, splashing in the water and acting like children. These apologies were completely unnecessary. At that moment, it dawned on me that our adopted Swedish norms had truly changed my approach to parenting from my traditional American upbringing.

Our lives in America were pretty cushy. We both had hard-earned careers in public health and consulting, and we owned a cute townhouse in the nice part of Atlanta. Life was quaint until we had our son, and that’s when I noticed the cracks in the system. Professionally, I had to supplement my unpaid maternity leave with the vacation time I had hoarded for four years. Personally, I noticed that I felt uncomfortable and unwelcome if I breastfed my infant in public. For child care, we hired a nanny, and I felt like I was paying her exorbitant amounts of money each month to witness my son’s first moments while I was at work. None of this made me happy. I wanted those moments for myself but I didn’t want to lose my career in the process. Why did I have to choose between career and family? I wanted to bake the cake and eat it, savoring every bite. Instead, I was paying someone to eat it for me and tell me how good it tasted.

My husband’s job opportunity in Sweden - an internal transfer - came during this period of general professional and familial dissatisfaction. After some quick research, we learned that Sweden invests 3.1% of GDP in financial benefits for children and families and offers a flexible parental leave benefit that provides both parents 480 days of leave to share (http://europa.eu/epic/countries/sweden/index_en.htm). This sounded too good to be true! Yes, this was how we wanted to live! We accepted the new job and headed to Sweden, prepared for an adventure but unaware of what all of those health and welfare statistics would mean for our family.

We immediately saw the benefits of a society that truly values family. Children are accepted as cherished members of Swedish society from the moment they are born. The generous parental-leave policy is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to family benefits. The structure of long parental leave provides mothers with the ability to wear both maternal hats─stay-at-home mom and working mom─without having to choose. The Swedish government subsidizes day care for children aged 1 to 6 years, so it isn’t an economic hardship to return to work. The American mother often can't afford to work once daycare costs grow beyond her paycheck. In the U.S., mothers often feel defined by their choice to stay at home or return to work and experience judgment from women who made the opposite choice (a.k.a. the infamous “Mommy Wars”). This parental judgment and narrow categorization doesn’t occur in Sweden─every mom was a stay-at-home mom and a working mom at one point in their lives. Nearly 77% of Swedish women with children under the age of 6 are employed.