Can You Buy a Nordic Motherhood?

From the DMs: "How do you feel being back in the US after a month in Finland?" This journey was my most transformative yet & this is how I plan to further change my life.

May 16, 2025

It feels like an eternity, but it’s been just two weeks since I sipped blueberry juice on my Finnair flight back to the US, with my son Jonas. Usually that moment feels pretty sad: it’s hard to leave behind my social circle and the incredible ease I feel when I’m there. But what’s often worse—in all honesty—is the anger I start feeling about the state of motherhood and childhood in the US.

This sounds crazy, but after two au pairs and one babysitter that didn’t work out, and with me having become the fall-back person of our family, Jonas’s short preschool hours left me only about two hours a day for any uninterrupted work.

I partly decided to travel to Finland in April so I could have high quality and reliable educational care for my four-year-old so I could finally write my book proposal. And of course, also to ground myself and be inspired by the way the happiest parents on earth do things. What was I still missing?

Why was I still struggling with something so basic? There had to be another way to approach this American life that I hadn’t figured out yet. If I wanted more Nordic-type ease in the US, what did I need to change? So seeking both ease and solutions, this past April, I set out on this quest.

What’s the Finnish daycare like where Jonas went? Think of like as a really nice place for 1-6 year olds, with multiple rooms including play rooms and mini dining room, that’s run by highly educated early childhood development professionals (that haven’t changed over the 3 years we have been going there when we are in Finland). After drop off, he plays outside with friends for hours in all kinds of weather, gets fresh, warm meals and snacks, naps, learns play-based preschool concepts, and enjoys fun activities like music and dance classes. It’s open 8 to 5, and Jonas often went from around 9:30 to 4:30, because drop off is flexible, we always had a calm morning. Sometimes I’d pick him up earlier for us to other fun things together. If I was a Finnish resident, I would pay about $400 for this, a month. As non-resident Finn, I paid $1400.

What did I do when Jonas was in daycare?

Besides writing in my favorite cafe, sipping my coffee hot from a real, pretty cup, and enjoying a bowl of warm barley porridge with cloudberry preserves after cold swims in the Baltic sea, I met with Finnish parents I knew from my older boys’ Finnish elementary school (which we go to once a year), met with an American mom with three kids who had moved to Finland, and further quizzed my Finnish mom and dad friends who had also lived abroad, before moving back home.

I also signed up to work with a Finnish family coach—I wanted to see what the Finnish solutions were to common challenges parents have with children (I can’t wait to share!). And I caught every possible moment to ask questions from Jonas’s daycare teachers, and got lucky to participate in the 4-year-olds parent-teacher conferences.

What’s more, I listened to podcasts, Finnish and American, in an effort to find new perspectives to these two vastly different value systems, and I read and cherished every message and question you sent me (here on Substack, and on Instagram)—to push me along on this journey of discovery.

I learnt so much that I’ll be bringing you numerous new, transformative and simple solutions to motherhood that I already adopted for our family (with eye-opening results, like the candy day!), but first, let’s talk about the basics.

Benefits & Rights for Purchase

On this journey, I came to accept that US would never become more Nordic—accepting things as they are brings peace—including understanding that US has never been progressive in terms of creating equity for women or children and likely never will be.

Listening to Scott Galloway in Trevor Noah’s “What Now” podcast, it hit me. He describes US as a uniquely transactional society, where you buy your rights, and ultimately, it’s money that runs the show—it’s money that gives you access. Having been born in a society where the core values are equality and wellbeing, I could argue that it isn’t right, but I’ll likely be happier, if I see it for what it is.

After diving into the history of daycare in Finland, I learnt that the first daycare was established in 1888 (essentially before Finland became an independent country in 1917) and the first maternity benefits in 1937. Since then, Finland has set up so many rights and benefits that I don’t even know them all: I keep being surprised every time I go back. If the US hasn’t caught on by now, it would be wishful thinking to hope for much advancement on this front.

And, what’s more, people in the US consider everything a government provides you a welfare benefit. In Finland, receiving all these benefits are not considered welfare, they are considered a basic wellbeing benefit. Whether your annual income is in the thousands or hundreds of thousands, you have and you use these benefits. But, in Finland, it’s also not just the government that provides ease for mothers, public and private businesses and institutions do too; somehow countless basic things are made efficient and easy for parents to take care of.

This got me thinking, if I lean into the idea that US is a transactional society, can’t I just buy myself Nordic-inspired rights & benefits? How much would a Nordic motherhood cost?

Allocating the Family Budget

I have read and heard many Americans say that they don’t want Nordic-type rights and benefits because they don’t want to pay higher taxes. I assume that they also don’t want to pay more for services or products by businesses or private institutions for those companies to invest in being family friendly. We also know that income opportunities are higher in the US than in the Nordics. This means that theoretically, people should have way more cash on hand. But how are we spending it?

Clearly, wrong. Because I have not heard "wellbeing for the mother” being the most important line item on anyone’s budget—and for a long time it wasn’t on ours as well. For example, we lived on one salary for over a year, and saved the other—not to “buy ourselves” a year-long parental leave with our first child, but to buy a condo (to my defense, it didn’t even occur to me then that we could have chosen that instead).

So, if we completely rethink how family earnings should be spent, shouldn’t we invest in wellbeing first? What’s wealth without wellbeing?

I started playing around this idea, and wrote down all the things that are available to me when I’m in Finland—and I’m curious and would love your thoughts here—could one even buy this type of ease?

I was able to get an online appointment with a pediatrician from a private practice within 20 minutes, at 8am; could I find an-instantly-available, tele-health pediatrician in the US?
I could walk to a pharmacy 5 minutes away, with zero wait - how quickly & easily could I get medication, perhaps even delivered to the door?
As for getting everything a Finnish daycare can provide, one would likely need to move to find something that resembles that. One of my Finnish friends who splits her time in between Helsinki, Athens & Palo Alto, with her spouse and a son who is Jonas’s friend, recently found one outside of San Francisco—had I known places like this existed and how much I would need it, I would have chosen where to buy a house within a walking distance to one, would you?
Daycares and schools all offer fresh, warm, healthy meals for children—can I just get someone else to make them these meals that they would actually eat?
Daycares and schools in Finland put very little work on moms or dads (except, of course, you can choose to help your child with the minimal homework)—there are no dismissal managers, class parent requests, donation drives, teacher appreciation gifts, theme clothing days, field trip forms, signing tests, snow days, or volunteering, or endless emails about something a parent needs to react to. This could be redirected to the husband, but maybe it also could just be outsourced?
In Finland, kids 7-9 years old and up can go to school and come back home on their own as well as their hobbies and sports (if they are nearby); perhaps we can outsource the driving?
For younger kids, daycares provide activities to kids during the day, so there’s no need to haul your child to extracurricular activities afterwards—in Finland, I chose to sign up Jonas for a once-a-week tennis class for fun, because it was easy to get there and I could meet more Finnish parents, and see how Finns do little kids’ sports (wild difference!). Could I lobby a preschool to add an activity within the school day or after? Likely not. Could I outsource someone taking him to a class after his short school day? Likely yes. Could I also follow the Finnish philosophy that kids need more free afternoons that scheduled ones? Absolutely.

After reading that list, you might be thinking, well, isn’t that what a parent does—all that? Being a good mom is being overwhelmed. And I would argue no. When you have freedom of choice (no matter what that choice is), and you have ease, balance and bandwidth, you can really focus and take time to parent and be more present.

In Finland, because my head wasn’t so filled with a million to-do’s, it was clear, and because I constantly didn’t need to multitask, I felt calmer and happier. I had so much more patience and no anxiety. And, I was wildly productive and creative with my time, and I had just the right amount for self care, like my Baltic sea dips or workouts, and seeing friends. I also arrived home a much more fun wife, than I was, when I left.

But, is that worth the money? Near us, where even an untrained babysitter costs $35 an hour, should moms even be allowed to do creative, less lucrative work—if that requires childcare—if it would be cheaper for the family to have them at home and spend the money in other ways? Should that art not be created? That book not written? That documentary not done? That music not played? What is creating something worth and who should creating be left to? Or, if your calling is at home with your kids, should you not be getting care-taking payments, which also add to your future financial safety—something Nordic women also have a right to? What’s basic wellbeing worth?

So much of Nordic-inspired parenting doesn’t cost us a dime, but some of it requires an investment—but would you or your family ever do it? Would you want to buy yourself a Nordic motherhood too?

Now, what would happen if at a dinner table tonight, you announced that you should rethink the family budget & prioritize Nordic-like benefits and rights—after all, you made more money living in the US and paying less taxes?

Can You Buy a Nordic Motherhood?

From the DMs: "How do you feel being back in the US after a month in Finland?" This journey was my most transformative yet & this is how I plan to further change my life.

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