Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Everyone’s Talking About Sex
Exaggerated claims that people from this religion or that religion have bigger
families are one example of how people tend to claim that certain values or
behaviors are culture-specific, unchanging and unchangeable.
It’s just not true. Values change all the time.
Take my lovely home country, Sweden. We Swedes are known for being
quite liberal and open about sex and contraception, aren’t we? Yet this hasn’t
always been our culture. These haven’t always been our values.
In my own living memory, Swedish values around sex were extremely
conservative. My father’s father, Gustav, for example, was born as Sweden
was leaving Level 2 and was, I believe, a quite typical Swedish man of his
generation. He was extremely proud of his large family of seven children; he

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never changed a diaper, cooked food, or cleaned the house; and he absolutely
would not talk about sex or contraception. His oldest daughter supported the
brave feminists who illegally started advocating the use of condoms in the
1930s. But when she approached her father after the birth of his seventh child,
wanting to discuss contraception, this kind, calm man got very angry and
refused to talk. His values were traditional and patriarchal. But they were not
adopted by the next generation. Swedish culture changed. (By the way, he
also disliked books and refused to use a telephone.)
A woman’s right to an abortion is supported by just about everyone in
Sweden today. Strong support for women’s rights in general has become part
of our culture. My students’ jaws drop when I tell them how different things
were when I was a student in the 1960s. Abortion in Sweden was still, except
on very limited grounds, illegal. At the university, we ran a secret fund to pay
for women to travel abroad to get safe abortions. Jaws drop even further when
I tell the students where these young pregnant students traveled to: Poland.
Catholic Poland. Five years later, Poland banned abortion and Sweden
legalized it. The flow of young women started to go the other way. The point
is, it was not always so. The cultures changed.
I come across the values of stubborn old men like my grandfather Gustav
all the time when I travel in Asia. For example, in South Korea and Japan,
many wives are still expected to take care of their husband’s parents, as well
as taking full responsibility for the care of any children. I have encountered
many men who are proud of these “Asian values,” as they call them. I have
had conversations with many women too, who see it differently. They find
this culture unbearable and tell me these values make them less interested in
getting married.