Hi everyone,

I am hoping that we can get some help. You see my daughter is doing her 6th grade country report on Switzerland. Here is our problem our school library only had one very out dated book on Switzerland, and so we have been looking up the information that we need on line. However now her teacher would like her to describe the family structure, giving a list of duties and responsibilities of the men, women, and children. Along with examples of daily life, and even what is worn and eaten. What we have found has been a bit dull (and pretty uninformative, Starla). I was hoping that by going to the source. The wonderful people who live in Switzerland we would be able to find more interesting, and real facts.

Thank you for your time!
Ashlie

Hello Ashlie,

Nearly all of us here in this forum are ex-pats in Switzerland, and not experts on Switzerland. We have our own experiences of life and culture here, but not necessarily positive or accurate. Very few of us grew up here. In fact, some of us would present you with very distorted or disturbing information, mainly due to accumulated micro-sociological traumas experienced on a daily basis.

Simply speaking, this forum IS NOT the place to be asking, if you want your daughter to get a good grade for her project.

Google will get your faster and more reliable results.

Check the library for a book called living and working in switzerland. This has interesting facts about things such as the stickers you need to place on your rubbish and the tax system being local ie if you live in the right place you pay less tax. Also try searching threads here. Many quirks of Swiss life have been discussed at some length. But as Litespeed said I don't think anyone is going to have the time to write your daughters school work for her... But that said if you ask direct and detailed questions you might get some answers: Like at Christmas they eat often Fondue and Raclette both Swiss specialities. Only the men asssuming they are married fill in tax returns etc

...accumulated micro-sociological traumas ...

Hello Ashlie,

Hopefully you've found http://www.swisswiki.ch/index.php/Expats-in-Zurich-FAQ
http://live-in-switzerland.com/e/faq...itzerland.html plus other pages there, and also on englishforum you might want to look through "Complaints Corner" and "What do you miss the most". Although most contributors are expats living in Switzerland, it might help you learn some of the peculiar parts of daily life here.

That's an incredibly dull question to ask in a modern country. I was recently in Namibia staying with a community of Bushmen, where that would be an interesting question, however here, it's dull, dull, dull.

The answer is, it's the same as in the US: The man gets the woman pregnant approximately twice during their marriage, she has the babies, the children go to school, grandparents make a fuss, yawn.

If you head for the hills and bother enough people, you might find someone who'll tell you that for 37 generations, the village elder always had a ritual of shooting a deer on the first thursday of each month, then the boys had the job of skinning it and the girls had the job of preserving the meat, etc, however even if you actually found something like this, it definitely wouldn't represent the majority.

I think you should find a way of asking the teacher for a more relevant assignment.

Hope this, er, helps!

=DM=

Two more web-sites to try are: swissworld.org, that is probably the best one for your purposes, and you might also try about.ch, I don't know much about that site, but it could be useful.
Good luck with the project!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland
The internet over here in Europe is MASSIVE. I've not found the end of it yet

This might also help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Switzerland

Thank you all so much!! I agree that it could have been a more interesting question, at least in the fact that it is a modern day world, and things seem to be the same. We were able to fined the basics of what we needed from all of your help! I only wish it had delved a bit deeper...Maybe when we hit ancient world history!

Thank you all again,
Ash9bug

Hit the English bookstore as well.

I agree with Diem, what a strange and irrelevant question ! An interesting response however would be to describe the duties of every man, woman and child in Switzerland to

a) have an appreciation of culture outside of their borders
b) appreciate that diversity is a good thing
c) recognise that there is more than one way of doing things
d) ensure teeth should not be unnaturally white

Compare and contrast. Expand your ideas and submit your coursework ( in the absence of Hunter S. ) as a treatise on the superficiality of the American Dream. We can of course endorse all the ideas therein If you don't get top marks then your teacher is a Republican.

dave

But the difference is that in Switzerland the mother is actively discouraged from going to work. Child care is outrageously expensive and hard to find and the schools don't provide lunch - they send the kids home at varying times so mommy can cook lunch. And it is acceptable to practice age discrimination and sex discrimination when hiring (ads that ask for women under the age of 30, etc.)

Of course the school project could be about Sweden....

What 30 is not young anymore?

It is all relative. It is young to me!

My wife once got told verbally on the phone she didn't get the job because she was married. In Australia or the USA that would be one sweet lawsuit.

And which is better for the children?

I suppose that would depend if the married person had kids or not.