CHILDREN OF THE BOX

The Finnish Approach to Raising Babies

Babies typically sleep in cribs, but if you’re a parent who can’t afford one, it can be a problem for the young child’s health and well-being. In the mid-1930s, infant death rates in Finland were a very high 65 out of 1,000 live births. Social scientists attributed many of these deaths to two factors. First, expectant parents sought too little prenatal care (often because they were unable to afford it). Second, they brought the baby into a house with inadequate materials: too few diapers, not enough clothes, and often nowhere to sleep. And as any parent of a newborn will tell you, the worst time to figure out what you need for a baby is when you come home after giving birth.

To solve this problem, Finland came up with a creative idea: A gift box, delivered to your home before your due date. Early gift boxes contained diapers, bedsheets, socks, and the like, as well as extra fabric so expectant mothers could create clothes for their newborns. Over the years, the boxes would grow into quite the cornucopias, with modern boxes each containing a little mattress and bedding; a snowsuit set with mittens, a hat, and booties; bodysuits, socks, and other everyday wear; bathroom items, such as a towel and toothbrush; and even bra pads and condoms. The aim was to deliver all of the things you’d need for your little one (and some other items for your own care).

All the would-be mother needed to do to receive a baby gift box was seek out a doctor for a few checkups during the pregnancy. The gift box program, which was originally provided only to low-income families, soon became very popular, and now is a staple of Finnish culture. All expectant mothers who seek prenatal care are offered a box, and almost all of them (approximately 95 percent) take it. The remaining 5 percent take a small cash amount instead.

The most distinctive part of the gift box offering—and the item that best defines the Finnish newborn culture—is the box itself. Because many of the poorest households in the 1930s couldn’t afford cribs, the boxes were specifically designed to act as a basic crib. According to the BBC, a majority of today’s Finnish community grows up—for a few weeks or months, at least—sleeping in a baby box. And the boxes proved to be instrumental in helping the original problem of high infant mortality. The rate fell from a peak nearing 90 per 1,000 in the 1940s to the single digits by the late 1970s. As of 2019, Finland has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.

BONUS FACT

You probably don’t think of Finland as a third world nation, but under the original definition of the term, it was. The term was coined during the Cold War. The “first world” countries were the United States and other NATO-aligned nations, while the “second world” included the Soviet Union, China, and its allies. Unaligned nations—including Finland—were given the “third world” moniker. The economies of most of the other original “third world” countries were still developing at the time, hence the misconception that “third world” is related to the strength of a nation’s economy.