As the country that invented Toddlers & Tiaras and crack babies, the U.S. doesn't always have the best track record when it comes to raising our kids. But if you want to freak out a set of American parents, just let them see some of the habits that are considered routine in other countries. Because somehow the world's kids do just fine despite the fact that ...

6 Europeans Park Their Kids on the Sidewalk

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Americans -- even ones from New York -- tend to freak out at the sight of unattended children, as a Danish tourist found out in 1997. While visiting the city, Annette Sorensen and her husband decided to eat at an East Village restaurant, but instead of hiring a babysitter or ordering takeout or, we don't know, maybe taking their child into the restaurant with them, they left their daughter parked in her stroller on the sidewalk.

Not one, but two different worried New Yorkers took the time to walk into the restaurant in hopes of finding the abandoned toddler's parents, begging whoever owned this child to just get her off the street. "The stroller alone is worth at least $30 in Times Square," they probably argued, New Yorkerly. The couple refused, leaving their baby outside for a whole hour while they enjoyed dinner. The locals called the cops, which was why the couple was arrested for child endangerment and lost custody of their kid for a day.

Via Joannagoddard.blogspot.com

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Here was their defense: It turns out that in the mom's hometown of Copenhagen, leaving your kid outside while you grab some dinner or a latte is as normal as not leaving your kid outside while you grab some dinner or a latte in New York.

The restaurants are small and smoky and crowded, and the sidewalk is as safe and unattended as the Muppet Baby nursery, apparently. Parents all over Europe have no problem littering the streets with the fruit of their loins.

Via Joannagoddard.blogspot.com

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This also explains why the New York situation wasn't an isolated incident -- a Swedish mom was gobsmacked (or whatever the Swedish version of that word is) when she was busted for leaving her kid outside a Tex-Mex restaurant in Massachusetts. Not only do European criminals not kidnap babies or their high-end strollers willy-nilly, European police are totally used to seeing kids out on the street unattended. "The child wasn't in danger and the mother claims she had an eye on things," one Stockholm cop told the press. You'd think the people who were the inspiration for the syndrome of sympathizing with your kidnappers would be a little more self-aware about how bad this looks. But you'd be wrong!