And why is that? Because Americans are puritanical.

> but the modern interpretation of an adult smoking and drinking in front of their child in the middle of the day is going to be interpreted as them being bad parents.

For you (American?) it's the Modern interpretation while for others it might just be the American interpretation.

---

I think it's just hard for people when being a product of a certain culture/society to see how said culture/society looks from the outside.

I don't think "puritanical" is the right word in this case. Unless you are implying that smoking being considered unhealthy is something based on Puritan or other religious values.

> In America we tend to assume that it's ok for children to eat food but not ok to smoke

"Americans eating in front of their children". Does not mention food.

That is the point

Just because the taboo changed does not mean that the Puritan-inside(tm) hardware most Americans have is not there (self-evident on conservatives and very rabid omg-living-in-denial in liberals)

The main point is, in Puritanism, thinking the wrong thing is a sin, so even writing it down is seen as bad. Other cultures can discuss without dirtying their souls/minds/egos.

The issue isn't that "writing it down is bad" its that certain descriptions of a character are going to cause readers to judge that character differently depending on the culture the reader is used to. People who think smoking around children is a bad thing, are going to judge a parent doing that around their children. So, an editor might believe that removing that reference will avoid people focusing on an unimportant detail in a way that negatively affects the story being told.

> I don't think "puritanical" is the right word in this case. Unless you are implying that smoking being considered unhealthy is something based on Puritan or other religious values.

We Americans are puritanical, and that's in the sense of being able to imagine that our values are universal because they are good and correct, having been arrived at only after a great deal of thought and even spilled blood; and that anyone who disagrees is at best thoughtless or ignorant, but quite possibly crazy or evil.

> For you (American?) it's the Modern interpretation while for others it might just be the American interpretation.

Where does this come from? This clearly isn't accurate for the majority of America. Maybe back in the 50s - but that was also 70 years ago.

We've come a long way here in usa, but we've got a ways to go.

There must be some code I do not know about. It is ubiquitous

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/e1/f9/ace1f9037208231eebf5...

What's with Americans wearing shoes on the bed? we're always shocked when we see that on TV.

1. Americans are always on the run, living at much higher pace, ready to take off at moment's notice.

2. The US is located more to the south than Europe, so the climate is warmer and drier in most parts, so your shoes are much cleaner (no snow, no mud).

Or maybe it's just a movie convention: like they want the movie character to be able to take off without wasting time on finding their shoes. Similar thing happens with how phone calls are shown in movies: there's a very short greeting, and after the conversation is over people just hang off, no pleasantries at the end, in the interest of air time.

it's exhausting listening to Europeans make such a huge deal about how they don't make a big deal about sex.

We’re a country of many peoples with many values and that’s one of the reasons we fight so much. Pretty much everything you listed is a norm which evolved from a strict—and yes, sometimes puritanical view—to accommodations for different people from the heart of the Tennessee River Valley to the beaches of California.

We’re not all still partying like we’re fresh off the boat and it’s 1620. As clean as a Hollywood production might look to you, the people that made that movie were probably all living rather diverse lifestyles, many of whom might make a Roman at their peak blush. The Puritanism is still there, but so is a lot more than that.

I didn't know non-puritanism scales with size! TIL!

> Pretty much everything you listed is a norm

Yes, that's exactly what I wrote. Seems you agree after all!

So, if I am just cherrypicking, where is the majority of states with uncensored radio and music? Where do you see nipples on magazines in supermarkets? Where can you say "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits" on TV and in movies without repercussion? In which states can you bathe nude or even just topless? Or just even change on the beach? Where can I consume alcohol in public as a norm, without brown bag? Where can I simply drink in a car, as long as I am not driving, or, as a driver, not exceeding the legal alcohol limit?

> many of whom might make a Roman at their peak blush.

Man, that made me laugh out loud.

Yeah, no further questions. Have you ever left the US?

You can drive 500 miles in this country and feel like you haven't moved an inch.

Priorities

America is extremely polarised. On the one hand it's blurring bottoms and censoring words of drugs in songs and the other it produces the most hard core porn and gun violence...

I once read an article that wrote about different cultures typical curse words. It explained that the principle of cursing is to break a taboo. If you know how a culture curses, you know what's holy to them.

* In North America, cursing often revolves around sexuality. * In slavic countries, cursing involves the mother. * In middle eastern countries, it involves the father. (Not sure if I remember that one correctly, though.)

He had heard that Americans don’t let children drink alcohol. That sounded puritanical.

When he arrived in the US, and saw people drinking more alcohol in one night than they drank in a year back home (this was hyperbole).

I’d drink with him. One shot of rum a night - no more, no less.

Americans aren’t one shot drinkers. We drink too much. And so do many Europeans.

If the point of the passage was that this character is "a good parent", then getting that point across to American audiences would depend on cultural context. If the point is to describe without judgement, then a more literal translation makes more sense.

A lot of people in Europe drink a beer or glass of wine when having lunch. It's completely normal.

It's not unheard of to drink with lunch in the US, but it isn't common in most subcultures. The whole concept of "happy hour" involves immediately after work being the accepted time for daily drinkers to start. Americans on the whole drink rather less, and have more teetotalers.

The easier thing to do is edit the beer out or replace it with coffee or soda, because the message the mid-day beer sends is in fact a parent who drinks too much in front of the kids.

An American with no experience of European culture might be startled that everyone drinks at lunchtime, but wouldn't consider a European, or American, who has a beer with lunch, to be degenerate or alcoholic. A round of drinks during a business lunch is commonplace, some places it's a Friday thing. What it isn't is totally unremarkable.

So as the exception rather than the norm, including this detail in a fictional context does send a different message. The editor is probably right to cut that line in translation.

I can't agree with that. As a non-European, if I'm buying a translated work from a European author about a European character, I expect them to behave as ordinary Europeans would. I am paying for the authentic foreignness.

If I wanted to see people behaving as they would in my own culture, I'd buy a work from a domestic author.

"happy hour" is the commercial offering of alcoholic drinks at a cheaper price to entice customers to come early. That will create a convivial atmosphere enticing more customers, and once there people will frequently have "just one more" a few times, extending their evening. Pretty sure it's about selling rather than social mores.

When you live in a culture where a midday drink or drinking in front of children is associated with drinking problems, soon enough you will live in a culture where only people with drinking problems will be having a midday drink or drink in front of their children.

Also it's hard to know without further context, but if the Euro was writing a story that would be set in America, that scene would seen somewhat odd to most Americans as mid-day drinking is not all that common, especially mid-week or without an explicit reason, like a birthday or some sort of celebration.

The need to do this in American movies, TV and books ruins a story.

There is a reason that Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was published in France.

But there are loud camps of culture warriors who raise a fuss if it's not "safe for kids" and a whole industry of grifters who amplify this, because getting people angry improves their TV ratings and the political campaign funds.

There are a lot of managers in the arts and culture industry (editors, producers, museum directors etc) who are rarely rewarded but often punished for resisting the culture warriors.

Unless the goal is to make the sentence palatable to Americans only, it could be understood as editing to make sure the author's point is preserved, but otherwise it is merely hiding what some believe life "should" look like.

And even if it's "bad parenting" why can't someone write a scene where this casual bad behaviour happens in the background, without having to explicitly point it out as bad?

And is it just an American thing? I haven't noticed that English, Irish, or Scottish people smoke all that much. But visiting Germany and seeing the blase attitude towards public smoking was definitely a culture shock.

Europe gets extra points for all the outdoor seating, but loses all of them because it's impossible to sit outside and enjoy a coffee or a meal without someone lighting up a cigarette next to them.

I do wish Europe would discover non-smoking rules near food & drink.

That's very interesting. I'd love to see the comparison between the stats on smoking related diseases in those places that prohibit public smoking and those that do not, given that both places have a similar number of smokers.

Is spending time with your kids in front of the fireplace similarly bad parenting? Because the health effects of an open fire indoors are worse.

To answer your actual question, yes, doing something that is worse than smoking near your kids is bad parenting (unless it's a rare enough event to cause negligible harm).

I will happily have my fireplace burning all day long on a subzero winter day, throwing on the occasional fresh log. But if I have a bonfire outside in summer, I need to be standing upwind.

It would be really surprising to me if it were the case, because secondhand smoke certainly seems like it creates more particulates in a house, since most wood smoke goes up the chimney. Plus, if you smoke, you're probably not only smoking for part of the year, like with fireplace use.

But, my intuition is not a strong argument, so that's why I'd love to see the study.

Also, how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed? What about clowns? What about how Swedish fish candies are made?

Most of it, yes, but there's still a very large increase in particles in the air, far more than when smoking.

> how is one other (potentially bad or not) activity germain to the one being discussed?

My parent was saying "given the health effects, you should not smoke in front of your children". I was asking how they squared this with an activity with much larger health effects that I suspect they think is fine to do with your kids.

Do you have any evidence that indoor wood fires are more damaging that cigarette smoke?

For the author, certain info (such as him very his usual briefs or she climaxing or someone smoking) is just to add "reality" to the scene. It doesn't say anything about the character per se. Yet, to Americans, it does. To them if it wouldn't say anything about the scene, it wouldn't be included. But that's only true for a subset of topics, them being body/sex stuff and smoking. Nobody would raise an eyebrow if the character was watching a football game.

> American readers need body/sex stuff to be told as stories and not as facts (so says my friend Sara Marzullo, about whom more later). The problem is that even if sex always requires storytelling, you can still just show a body—or a feeling, a glitch in the software of life where sex transpires—in a way that is not easy to interpret, or in a way that maybe doesn’t need to be interpreted at all, but that only needs to ring true. And even if this thing I just wrote sounds wholesome and real, somehow American literature—writers, editors, critics, readers—needs sex always to be contextualized. It should be raunchy. Or loving. Or a cautionary tale. It cannot be open-ended.

> This is a good chunk of what literature is for me. An opaqueness that affords us openendedness. Openendedness that is based on a feel for the world where details create facts so vivid you can touch them. They make you say « that’s real ». If stuff is put in a story only to create the sense of a story, then often it won’t coalesce into a simulacrum of reality.

It's one thing for an editor to say 'this passage is confusing or boring,' quite another to add in personal opinions of fictional or historical characters.

There's a question of how familiar or unfamiliar a story should seem when it's set in a time and place that's different from what the reader is familiar with. Do you emphasize the differences or hide them? Maybe you add a footnote? But this assumes the reader needs a footnote. It's a way of highlighting the distance between the reader and the story setting.

Cultural changes are like that.

As someone who reads in part to find out about cultural differences, I think that maybe stories shouldn't seem too familiar, and I like footnotes and asides. Perhaps others will think them distracting, though.