I love my town of Amherst, MA. We’re good people. Good, concerned people. Good, concerned, deeply ethical people. Good, concerned, deeply ethical people who care. Good, concerned, deeply ethical people who care and who really do know the best way you should be living your life, especially if you’re from one of those less evolved countries like . . . Sweden.
A Swedish woman who police say left her baby unattended outside a Massachusetts restaurant while she ordered food inside was reported to a state agency for possible child maltreatment, officials said on Monday.
Police said they were summoned to the Bueno Y Sano eatery in the western Massachusetts college town of Amherst on Friday after the 1-year-old boy was left alone in his stroller on the sidewalk for about 10 minutes.
The woman, who authorities did not identify, said she “found nothing wrong with the situation” and that it was common in Sweden to leave young children alone outside a restaurant, said police.
The boy reportedly was in good health after the incident.
But how could the kid be in “good health” after being left in a stroller on a sidewalk for ten minutes in one of the safest cities in America? Put that woman in jail!
By the way, for non-residents, Bueno Y Sano is a great little burrito place that is tucked in a courtyard off the main street, shaded, quiet, untrafficked. In other words, perfectly safe.
Happy Valley News Hour 
A culture clash I suppose… I live in Sweden and people are leaving their babies outside shops all the time. You can rely on ordinary passers-by to look out for your child’s well being if you are doing some shopping, or what ever. If something happens people will go into the shop and give you a notice. It works okey here….
American society is sick – of fear of violence and crime. It’s really imprisoning you to stay indoors and to see only the worst in your fellow-citizens. So sad. It’s like living surrounded by a pack of wolves.
Leaving babies out for a while in a stroller is very common practice in more peaceful societies as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Norway, Netherlands. We have a culture where the whole society and our fellow-citizens take care of kids and it’s perfectly normal to trust other people’s good will. Wolf packs are in the woods, not in the streets.
Believe or not, but in Finland it’s common practice to let few weeks old babies to have nap outdoors in a baby carriage, even in winter sub freezing point temperatures. Babies love it. Only pack of wolves makes us to keep babies indoors.
By the way, who called the cops? Some local hypocrite?
While the post and the news item have their level of humor, I have to say this raises my hackles slightly.
While it is obvious that there are some huge and some smaller cultural differences between vast bodies of people, we are all human and no one, no country, is exempt from idiotic, dangerous, fearful, or generally bad behavior.
Someone thought they were protecting a child, the mother knew the baby was safe. Can both be right?
We all know how the Germans have taken care of their neighbors in recent history and we all know that countries in very close proximity stood by, not calling the cops, right?
I think it’s a combination of the fear culture, fed daily by cable news, and nanny state badgering. The fear culture seems to have removed any reasonable analysis of the reality of potential threats — if there’s ANY chance of something bad happening, no matter how infinitesimally small, then one must protect against that. It’s a control thing, I think. The irony is that the baby was at greater risk flying in the plane to get here, driving in the car, etc. The other part is plain old busy-bodies with nothing better to do than to tell everyone else how to live their lives.
In all fairness, if I was walking through Boltwood Walk (where the restaurant is) and I came across a baby in a stroller sitting alone on the sidewalk, I would stop and look around. I would pop my head in the restaurant and see if there was anyone who looked like the mother or father. But I would never call the police unless there was no parent in the vicinity.