re: #302 HappyWarrior

Good points. People definitely are more kind and generous to those they actually know. Didn’t know that about the financial aid to single moms in the past.

My paternal great grandparents in Sweden couldn’t make a go of it on the farm they rented and fell into the category of inhyseshjon (dependent tenant) which is evidently colloquially translated as “parasite” since they are lodgers who can’t pay rent.
Obviously they received charity-they had a cottage to live in-but they lost 3 babies in 4 years so things must have been difficult in the extreme. Eventually they moved a few miles away where in his late 50s my great grandfather got a job quarrying stone. I cannot imagine.
So, even under those circumstances charity was limited and came with a lot of social censure, though I’m sure the whole community was dirt poor and there wasn’t a lot to go around.