How Portuguese Culture Makes It Easier To Parent
This is part of Reason‘s 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
My baby was stolen in a Portuguese airport.
The culprit was a granny who worked in the bakery there, crafting pastéis de nata. While I was sorting out the rental car booking, my husband had taken our then-9-month-old son to fetch pastries. Our son quickly disappeared—taken behind the counter by an insistent old lady who wanted to show him around and, presumably, feed him spoonfuls of custard. Who am I to object to local custom?
Portuguese culture grants special privileges to children and families, and those privileges really do make a big difference. We’ve been to Lisbon, surf towns to the west, the Azores, and even Cabo Verde, the African island nation and former colony, where many of the same norms apply. Pregnant women, the elderly, and people traveling with young kids get special lines for airport security and customs, ushered through as fast as possible. Native Portuguese will get offended if they see you in the normal line, instructing you to go to the priority line and sometimes getting the attention of the customs officer to make sure the system is adhered to—the only time Southern Europeans have ever been rule-abiding!
Though their Northern European neighbors are strict about taxi cab car seat rules and paranoid about child safety on buses (in Norway they made me use a car seat), the Portuguese are relaxed about it, allowing parents to make whatever choices they deem best. This is helpful for those of us who don’t travel with car seats, preferring to use public transit wherever possible.
Their playgrounds allow lots of risky play. We availed ourselves of Lisbon’s Jardim da Estrela, which had plenty of climbing structures, including one extending more than 15 feet in the air, full of kids as young as 5 jousting for the top spot.
Contrast this with the American approach: Our illustrious federal regulators publish the Public Playground Safety Handbook, which discourages pl
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