What's the family life and culture of families like in Poland?

What's the family life and culture of families like in Poland?

My opinion is that it is not too different from families in other parts of the western world on average.

Merged: Polish Family Life - I want to avoid inappropriate behaviour

Hi,
I will stay with a Polish family during my visit in Poland. I do not know them yet. So, I want to avoid from inappropriate behavours. What can you advise?

For example, when you enter the home, should i take my shoes off? (we do it in my country) or how about dinner? Is it inappropriate to leave the table before father or etc?

Any advise about family life would be cool! I hope they will try to do their best for me. So I want to do best for their hospitality!

Edit: They live in a small city if it helps for advice.

Yes, it is expected in Poland that you would take off your shoes when you enter someone's house. I think it's only really a western Europe/US thing to keep your shoes on in the house. I grew up in SEA so I have always done it as habit, don't really get the whole dragging your dirty shoes through other houses they do in the UK.

It depends. For short "official" visit in nouveau riche castle we don't take shoes off but in blocks in small town we do. If you stay in home with them longer than dinner, evening you can pay respect to hostess effort to keep the floor shiny.

what are the roles of the family?(mother, father, children, etc.)

Pretty much the same as any other modern, European country. It's not a tribe in the Amazon :)

Dad, as in much of the known world, used to be more or less chief to sole breadwinner. Nowadays, uncounted female entrepreneurs in Poland have basically changed all that, and in most urban families, there are two solid incomes, mom's and dad's:-)

I'm not so sure about the man being the sole breadwinner, not in post-war Poland anyway. Most women I've met in their sixties or seventies had jobs while raising their families, but working hours for women tended to be from maybe 6 or 7 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon so they were home to make dinner for the family etc. There were widows and divorced women who had to work. Lots of divorces in Poland, despite being a Catholic country.

What you described is an American narrative that has virtually nothing to do with post 1944 Polish society.
After WWII when all adults were expected to hold down jobs.


Huh? Where did you get that idea. The end of communism saw a massive expansion of female unemployment (especially middle aged and older women whose companies collapsed in the conditions of shock therapy. In the late 90s younger female unemployment was high because maternal leave policies made them all but unemployable.

Now that's changed and all educated young people are in demand, but entrenprenuership is not a major feature of young Polish women (or men). The entrenpreneurial period was just after the collapse of communism when everybody and his dog were either selling things on the street or starting companies (most of which went kaputt pretty quickly).

True that.

On the other hand folks, what are many an entrepreneur/entrepreneuse other than formerly unemployed persons who managed somehow to get their own motor going and start a business:-)

During WWII, there were scores of women, a large number of whom were mothers, whose husbands were off fighting and who got jobs in factories.

Again you're describing the US, the Polish experience was very different. Women had been in factories before the war and often had to take part in combat (or support for combat) during the war.

Don't I know it! Check out that great old propaganda movie "Forbidden Songs" with Danuta Szaflarska. It's idealized, but nevertheless showed Polish audiences

the toughness of women, who despite adversity, march forward in to war.