Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Help!

I need your help - for my silly book.
Also, because I´ve got a rare case of sociology-interest.

Here´s the question:
I´d like to know about international drinking traditions after a baby is born - for the fathers, of course.
In Germany, for example, a couple of days after a new baby is born, the new dad meets with his friends, brothers, all male family members and gets totally wasted. It´s called "Pinkelparty", and it´s especially popular in the more rural regions. It´s very... um... male and archaic.

However, I was wondering whether there are similar traditions in other countries, cultures, how they are called, what they involve, and basically all you know about that.
I googled, but that wasn´t really helpful, so I thought I´d ask you :)

Thank you so much in advance!

3 comments:

Pinja said...

In Finland we have a quite similar thing called "Varpajaiset". Soon after the baby is born, the father has this party with his male friends (and possibly relatives) and gets very drunk. Also big cigars are smoked... However I do feel that in these days there are less and less of these parties and the focus is actually moving to the whole family.

Hana said...

Czech people do that, of course, but since our culture is in general very similar to yours, it comes as no surprise.
I have a different experience with the only male event. In my circles, even women participate.
The father smokes a cigar. Common in my area is to give the father a bottle of a really good quality schnaps (preferably homemade) to bury/hide and then dig out when the kid is 18 and share a drink! However, I am not sure if it is a general rule.
Good luck with your research!

Anonymous said...

To my knowledge, Americans have no such tradition for men. Decades ago, cigars might have been passed out in the hospital waiting room, but this is a very old fashioned thing now. The focus is very much on the mother and giving her a baby shower. This is a party to welcome the baby and to "shower" the baby with gifts... (not an actual washing of the baby as the 5 year old daughter of a friend thought it was a couple days ago!).