This trend threatens not only to erode our individual capacity to handle crises, but also to weaken society’s structural self-confidence and diminish our collective moral courage, writes Hanna-Karin Grensman.

“The safety chat is proving a success on public transport.” That is how the impact of the chat service, which since 2020 has enabled passengers to communicate directly with SL’s safety control centre, has been described. In concrete terms, it has doubled the number of contacts with passengers.

It is, of course, excellent that such a chat service exists. It is also clearly useful in far more unsafe situations than a telephone number would be, since contact can be made without drawing attention to oneself.

At the same time, we are seeing an ever-growing tendency to hand the problems we encounter over to “someone else”, often some form of public authority. And when someone else is formally responsible, I am relieved of responsibility. I do not need to overcome any discomfort or uncertainty I may feel about taking action.

I do not need to act firmly against someone who is disturbing or harassing another person, because there are staff for that. And when I do not act myself, I also do not gain the experience of dealing with difficult people, for example in public spaces.

The less experience I gain, the more uncertain I become in such situations. My confidence in my ability to protect myself, and others, diminishes.

My dependence on staff therefore increases. On the day when no staff are available, I may be almost entirely unable to handle the situation independently. This is how “learned helplessness” is created: the experience of being unable to act in a specific situation, even though, objectively speaking, I should be able to learn how to do so.

Learned helplessness makes individuals weaker and less secure, which increases the demands placed on the very staff in question. They, in turn, require more resources in order to cope with this increase.

In concrete terms, then, this chat service will lead to fewer people intervening in various situations, which will increase the need for security guards, and therefore the costs. Learned helplessness spreads into yet another area. Already weak moral courage is weakened still further, with potentially disastrous consequences.

That said, the solution is of course not to remove the chat service. I may possess all the moral courage in the world, but it is not always reasonable or appropriate for me to intervene on my own. There is a difference between courage and recklessness.

The value of the chat service is beyond dispute. But how do we counteract the learned helplessness that comes with it? How do we move forward in a way that increases individual capacity to handle crises, while also strengthening society’s structural self-confidence and our collective moral courage?

By each of us taking personal responsibility for maintaining moral courage as both a norm and a practice. In other words, by actively and consciously exercising it whenever the opportunity arises.

Developing such a capacity is good for the individual. It also reduces the risk of later feeling ashamed for not having acted when one believed one should have done so, but did not dare. It is good for the person being targeted, because the experience of having stood alone can have a greater and more lasting psychological impact than the violation itself. And it is good for society, which becomes a safer place when we take responsibility for one another.

So there are, quite simply, no excuses. At least not if one hopes to receive help oneself when the moment comes.

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Do you believe that you own your body? That it is yours to do with as you wish? That you have a right to bodily autonomy?

It is a popular belief. Yet upon closer examination, one is forced to conclude that it is largely untrue. Although human rights principles emphasise bodily autonomy, the state has established an extensive set of rules governing what people may do with their own bodies—even in matters that affect no one but themselves.

This is a matter of principle. What distinguishes a liberal democracy is that laws are enacted to protect individuals from having their rights violated by other people, not to override an individual’s right to self-determination.

The state’s unjustified authority is evident, for example, in the fact that individuals have no right to choose assisted dying. In September, a woman was sentenced to prison after helping her husband to die. His documented consent, and the fact that she had attempted to take her own life at the same time, made no difference. The fact that he had asked for her assistance was not considered exculpatory; his wishes were barely relevant in legal terms.

Assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal in a number of countries, but only under specific circumstances. A simple desire to die is not accepted as justification, regardless of whether it is connected to mental illness. Assistance is generally restricted to those who are terminally ill and suffering severely. The authority that the state has claimed over the individual’s body—and life itself—is thus permitted to override the individual’s own claim to both.

These restrictions are often justified on the grounds that they reflect the moral views of the majority. Few people regard it as a serious problem that sexual relations between close relatives are prohibited in many circumstances, or that individuals have only limited legal capacity to consent to violence against themselves.

Yet failing to defend the principle of bodily autonomy simply because one has no desire to cross those particular boundaries is rather like refusing to defend freedom of expression because one has nothing to say. People have been convicted despite demonstrable consent. For some, these restrictions are not theoretical but deeply consequential. They create a form of moral majoritarianism—a tyranny of the majority—which runs contrary to the principles of liberal democracy.

What distinguishes a liberal democracy is that laws are enacted to protect individuals from having their rights violated by other people.

The state’s role should therefore be limited to ensuring that violations of consent are punished. It should not be taking a position on actions undertaken between consenting adults.

Instead, the state’s authority over our bodies is treated as so self-evident that it is rarely questioned. This enables a wide range of paternalistic and restrictive laws, from compulsory motorcycle helmets to smoking bans and licensing requirements for public dancing. When the state consistently fails to respect individual bodily autonomy, it is hardly surprising that proposals such as the one put forward by Christian Democrat politician Ella Bohlin in October—that all citizens should automatically be registered as organ donors—receive support.

Such a measure would undoubtedly increase the number of registered donors. It would also increase the number of people listed in the register who do not, in fact, wish to donate. Negative enrolment—the practice of binding individuals without their active consent—has precisely this effect, which is also why it is generally prohibited in other contexts.

Ensuring meaningful consent can, admittedly, be legally complex. Doctors’ reluctance to perform assisted dying deserves respect. Reckless decisions by individuals may impose costs on the public sector. The shortage of transplant organs is a genuine problem.

But these are problems that can be addressed. They are not legitimate reasons to curtail citizens’ bodily autonomy.

The role of the state is not to act as an overprotective parent to citizens deemed incapable of knowing what is best for themselves and therefore in need of protection from poor choices. On the contrary, its role is to protect the individual’s right to be unreasonable, irrational and foolish.

Only when a person’s actions infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others does the state acquire both the right—and the obligation—to intervene.

Not before.

This article was originally published in Smedjan (Timbro) on 12 December 2019.

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A ridiculously low maintenance payment. That is often the only legal consequence when a parent relinquishes responsibility and disappears from a child’s life. Despite the fact that children’s rights frameworks emphasise a child’s right to a relationship with both parents, there is virtually nothing that regulates a parent’s obligation to remain present.

What does exist, however, is the right of an absent parent to return and demand access to the child. It makes little difference how long he has been absent (and it is most often a he, although the reverse certainly occurs), why he left, whether he has refused to pay maintenance, or whether he previously promised to forgo custody. Not even abuse directed at the mother or the child is necessarily decisive. A parent without custody retains the right to apply for custody, residence arrangements and contact rights, all of which confer rights—and, admittedly, obligations—in relation to the child.

Children’s Rights Also Include the Right to Be Free from an Indifferent Parent

Being abandoned by a parent is, of course, often painful for a child. Yet in many cases it is probably preferable to the alternative. If we are going to speak seriously about children’s rights, we must also speak about a child’s right to be free from an indifferent—or, in the worst cases, unsuitable—parent.

Spending time with a disengaged father can be distressing in the moment and damaging in the long term. It can undermine self-esteem and negatively affect wellbeing. That is a high price for a child to pay.

When discussing the parents themselves, people generally show a degree of understanding towards the woman and accept her right to choose—or reject—both the pregnancy and parenthood. The man, by contrast, is often told that he has only himself to blame. If he knew how pregnancy occurs, then he should simply accept the consequences.

Curiously, those making this argument rarely mention that the woman possessed the same information. If personal responsibility is the governing principle, it ought logically to apply to both parties.

Similarly, it is often claimed that men are the driving force behind sexual encounters and are therefore responsible if contraception is not used. As though women lacked sexual agency. As though women bore no responsibility for protecting themselves against an unwanted pregnancy. The idea is as patronising as it is sexist.

With legal abortion, however, the father would lose the privilege of re-entering the child’s life simply because he decides he wants to.

It Takes Two to Create a Pregnancy

It is entirely reasonable to expect those involved in creating a pregnancy to take responsibility for it. But that is not the same thing as placing the entire burden of responsibility on the man while offering him no meaningful choices beyond the admonition that he should have abstained from sex if he did not wish to become a father.

Nor is it a proportionate consequence that a few minutes of sexual activity, driven by a basic biological impulse, should be permitted to determine a substantial portion of a man’s future life.

The fact that the woman’s perspective necessarily carries greater weight because she carries the pregnancy does not give us licence to dismiss the man’s perspective altogether. Least of all when young people are involved, and especially not when there are practical ways of addressing the issue.

Legal Abortion Protects the Child

One way to strengthen the rights of both the child and the father is through so-called legal abortion. Under such a system, a man would be given the right to renounce legal fatherhood during the early stages of pregnancy, thereby relinquishing both parental rights and parental obligations.

In practice, men already possess the most significant right that legal abortion would formalise: the ability to leave. Fathers can already abandon their children. What legal abortion would change is their ability to return later and reclaim the role of father whenever they choose.

The principal benefit would therefore be greater stability and predictability for both the child and the mother in cases where the man does not wish to become a parent. The unsuitable or disengaged father would no longer be able to exploit his current ability to change his mind.

Every child deserves active and loving parents who genuinely want them. Legal abortion would increase the likelihood of children receiving precisely that.

First published in Smedjan (Timbro) on 28 August 2019.

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Kristina takes all the parental leave with little Anna because her husband Karl-Oskar’s farm would otherwise go bankrupt. When Karl-Oskar comes in from the cowshed, he takes over responsibility for Anna and also carries out virtually all household work during the remaining sixteen hours of the day.

Question: Which parent is disadvantaged by gender inequality?

Answer: Kristina.

At least that is the conclusion one reaches if one accepts the logic of TCO’s Equality Index. The index takes parental leave uptake into account but ignores how responsibility for the child is divided during the rest of the day and how household labour is shared. Nor does it capture the financial consequences of parental leave for each parent, or whether one parent’s occupation in practice limits their ability to take leave.

All of these factors clearly influence family decisions without necessarily reflecting a lack of gender equality.

That parental leave uptake is a poor proxy for equality is also reflected in statistics from Statistics Sweden (SCB), which show that men and women work roughly the same total number of hours on average. Men perform more paid work, while women undertake more unpaid domestic labour. Women also earn approximately 95 per cent of what men earn once factors such as occupation, education and working hours are taken into account.

Another weakness of the index is that it focuses exclusively on economic measures, despite the fact that most people plainly value their children more highly than financial outcomes. In strictly economic terms, having children is almost always a financial loss.

Nor does the index measure whether decisions regarding parental leave were preceded by respectful discussions between two equal partners. Yet many would argue that this is the very essence of equality.

Equality is therefore a complex issue that cannot be reduced to a single variable. That does not seem to trouble TCO, however, which describes women’s use of approximately 70 per cent of parental leave days as a problem.

When Free Choice Is Replaced by Social Engineering

Most people agree that gender-based expectations can restrict people’s perceived choices. Many also believe that this ought to be addressed.

But when an analysis is built upon flawed premises, it is hardly surprising when it produces ineffective solutions.

TCO, for example, argues that changes to the parental insurance system are needed in order to accelerate a more equal distribution of parental leave.

Such measures might well influence the distribution to some extent, although additional regulation is unlikely to have the same dramatic effect as previous reforms. What is far less clear is whether they would produce greater equality.

For Karl-Oskar, somewhat ironically, the result could easily be less equality at his expense.

The political steering of parental leave has, in many respects, been successful. It has demonstrated both to men and to employers that fathers can take parental leave and are expected to do so. It has created favourable conditions for fathers to build close relationships with their children, expanded mothers’ opportunities to participate in working life, and contributed to the greater equality reflected in SCB’s figures.

But increasing—or even maintaining—the current level of regulation now comes at the expense of the majority of families who already have genuinely equal relationships when it comes to these matters.

The choices families make, based on their own circumstances and preferences, are effectively dismissed in favour of detailed political management that lacks any clear potential to produce greater equality.

It is social engineering at its most intrusive.

This article was first published in Smedjan on 13 March 2019.

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