Hallo. Ich wollte diejenigen fragen, die bereits mit Familie oder Kindern nach Norwegen gezogen sind. Wie ist das Leben für Kinder? Ich habe irgendwo in Foren gelesen, dass man dort leicht das Elternrecht verlieren kann. Was meine Meinung ein wenig geändert hat. Ist es ein sicheres Land für Kinder?
EDIT: Forum-Link, wo ich das gelesen habe.
Von man_and_life
15 Comments
it is one of the best countries for kids if you ask me. if you do not hit your kids, and feed them occasionally the Social services are an ok bunch of people who help you more than harm you.
Ignore all the rubbish about loosing parent rights. It is all a bunch of lies. There is zero risk unless you mistreat your children massively.
You and your kids will be fine in Norway unless your parenting method involves physical or emotional violence. Also it helps if you are not extremely opposed to authorities if for some reason they do receive a report concerning your family that they have to investigate.
Those forums are lying/pushing an agenda/conspiracy nuts.
You really have to fuck up to lose the parenting right, the child protection service is sadly more often than not way too passive.
It’s in no way easy to lose custody of children. But it’s comparatively easier than in other countries, because the interests of the child outweigh other interests.
Haha how the heck do those forums say you can easily lose parental rights? That’s bollocks.
Norway literally is one of the safest countries to raise children in. Very very child-friendly. This widespread belief about parents rights is unfounded – I mean they have children protection services, but like in any developed countries, as long as you don’t abuse your kids, there’s no issue. Norway has no incentives to take away parents rights for trivial things, making things worse for the kids, which would be the exact opposite of what they’re trying to achieve.
But the whole culture is very child-friendly, and children are considered a full part of society, so a lot of activities are organized for kids, there are lots of playgrounds, etc. Kids have rights in Norway, and the whole culture gives a lot of agency to kids. (And corporal punishment is illegal. )
This is the country where gentle parenting has been raised to be the national culture. If you grew up with a different parenting culture, this may be frustrating at times. And while public childcare is subsidized and relatively inexpensive, having a personal nanny would be extremely expensive and very rare. And parents are integrated into childcare, often involved as volunteers to participate or organise kids’ activities with the schools, etc. You cannot outsource child-rearing here. (I’m not saying this as a judgement, just that it can be very different from other countries in the world.)
Again, to me, Norway is one of the best, if not the best, country to raise children in.
Recently moved to Norway with my Norwegian wife and two kids.
I have no worries about them been taken away and it’s something I haven’t even thought about until I read this post.
If you’re in a custody battle or something then this may complicate things but unless you are an abusive parent there is no reason for the state to intervene in your family life.
Our kids love it here and the kindergarten they attend is awesome. Our kids are very outdoor kids and the culture and climate here compliment that very well!
The anti social services movement in Norway are batshit insane people who are mad that they can’t abuse their children without facing consequences. Nothing to worry about for normal people
You only lose parental roles if you can’t follow Norwegian laws. Child protective Services is there to protect the child, if they think the child is in danger they will remove the child. The norwegian child protective service, barnevernet, is more likely to act and remove the child than in a lot of other countries, and put more weight on the well-being of the child than reconciliation with the biological family, which has lead to a lot of tension. Definitely room for improvement, but no reason to be scared of having your child taken away if you’re able to care for your child and follow norwegian law. FYI: hitting your child in any way is considered child abuse and is illegal.
Me and my parents moved here when I was å Child, and it was a wild childhood. CPS Should have been involved several times, but were not. So No worries.
Besides that, education, healthcare, and mostly everything is really Great. Just don’t move to Oslo. It’s become a crime City. More stabbings, ghettos, teen on teen crime and so on.
Just do some research, It’s bad in some places, but not all places.
It’s fine bringing kids here.
What you read about parents loosing rights is not necessarily wrong, but there’s a lot of context, including cultural context.
About 10-15 years ago online communities for foreigners in Norway started sharing some cases where specific towns/kommunes seemed to be taking kids away from foreign partners rather quickly, while those same towns would be much slower and more cautious before removing kids if the parents were Norwegian. Foreign-born parents felt they were being treated differently and unfairly. When they started to speak about this publicly, Norwegians quickly rushed to the defense of the child welfare agency and blamed the parents for “obviously” abusing their children since foreigners “don’t get” that Norway takes care of kids unlike other places. The attitude in the responses from Norwegians was arrogant and xenophobic as hell. This caused a lot of bad faith and judgement on both sides, with everyone involved claiming things with without facts or without evidence. The feeling the Norwegian government and public was ignoring this issue caused diplomatic incidents between Poland and Norway and India and Norway, just to name two. In some cases it later became clear the parents were abusing the child, in others it does seem like (from what we know) the local child protection officers made some xenophobic assumptions. People still cherry pick the evidence to support their viewpoint. Either way, it seems like things have gotten better on that front, and I at least have not seen new cases in the online foreign communities saying their kids are getting taken away unfairly.
Also, something like 40 cases have been brought against Norway and the child welfare agency at the EU Court of Human Rights, and Norway was found guilty in several cases of taken children away from their family too quickly (or adopting them away too quickly and not giving the biological parents enough time to fix their situation). Note, though, that these cases were not the same ones mentioned above, and usually involved Norwegian parents. But the cases certainly added to the negative perception of the child welfare office.
On the flip side, ask Norwegians about it and you’re sure to get stories of kids of Norwegian parents who should have been removed from their abusive homes much sooner and weren’t. They think the child welfare people should be more active than they are now, and will react very negatively to the idea that the child welfare office is somehow unfair.
So that’s where all this noise about kids being taken away easily in Norway comes from. In some ways true, in some ways not, and very, very contextual to specific towns and cases. So as a foreign parent it is worth having this on your radar, but at the same time it’s not something to really worry about. The main advice I would give is be ready for discussions where Norwegians talk as though they are the only people on earth who ever thought it was a bad idea to spank their children, and that the rest of the world beyond Norwegian borders is a lawless child-spanking free-for-all hellscape. When you find yourself in one of these conversations, just smile, nod, assure them Norway is super duper great, and ask if they’re going skiing this weekend.
Norwegian here. You can lose parents rights if you abuse your children. ANY kind of violence against children is illegal. Parents have no more rights to strike their children than anyone else. Children have individual rights by law.
But even though the laws are strict, children are still abused. Child protective services in Norway are overworked, and in my view more children should be taken away from their parents, but there really is nowhere to send them.
Follow the law, and no one will take your children away from you.
Its way better for kids than other places.. im looking at you USA…
As already stated. Don’t hit your kids, feed them, wash them from time to time and let them go to school. Domestic violence is a big red flag. If there is evidence of violence against kids, “barnevernet”(child protection services) will probably skip the “help, guide and visit”-steps, and go straight to “take-the-kids-away”.
I know of nobody who are worried about “barnevernet” (each municipality has a child-care office). Or… I know of a boy in my home town who’s familiy was visited and guided by barnevernet, so I guess the parents were worried. But that was warranted, as they were jobless drugheads. The kid did not turn out well, and he might have been better off with someone else from an early age…
There has been some discussion around “barnevernet”, as it should be. Some points would be:
* The people who has lost parental rights are really mad about it, as is natural. And the information they give are broadcast on the forums, but they are seldom very “objective”. Barnevernet can’t say anything, as they are bound by law to not give any information to the public.
* Some cases are borderline, and has been run through court. These cases include:
* a woman that was intellectually retarded.
* a case where the doctor had (wrongfully?) diagnosed a woman with being intellectually reduced / retarded. Combined with someone reporting the family to “barnevernet”, this caused some issues.
* A few barnevernet employees are not professional, and the case ends in a court.
* The cases above seems to end in one or more of the kids being taken care of by other people (There is a priority to use relatives if possible, or else “foster” families), indicating that there was a need for involvment of barnevernet.
* There are ongoing court cases where people complain that they were taken by the barnevernet, that they were not taken by barnevernet, and/or that barnevernet did not take good enough care of them.