Opening Scene: My Initial Excuse for this Blog's Title

Every morning I wake up around 6 a.m., if not earlier, to the sound of my infant daughter sitting up beside me. She doesn't really make a sound as she sits up, so maybe, it's instinct. Father's instinct. Though asleep, I just know that she has risen, and so must I, or else she might crawl out of the bed and fall. My baby rises for her first bottle about the same time everyday no matter what time she slept the night before. No alarm clock needed.

Carrying my baby in one arm, I open the fridge with the other and then reach for the carton of milk. The label reads "Laktosfri" on one side and "Laktosefri" on another. It's Swedish and Danish, respectively, for lactosefree, and pronounced about the same as the English word.

Now I pour about 5 ounces into her bottle and pop this inside the microwave oven for about a minute just so it is not cold. Soon, she is feeding herself, and I take advantage of this moment to change her diaper. Then, it occurs to me, "Laktosfri" may be a good title for this blog.

You may be asking by now: So what has lactosefree milk got to do with human rights in Scandinavia?

Nothing intrinsically, except that for me it is a symbol of my personal situation as a full-time single dad and also of Sweden and of the Swedish day care system which takes care of my daughter while I go to Gothenburg University to study Human Rights. I associate it with Sweden and Swedish day care because in here, although my daughter appears to be the only one out of the 21 members of her class to be allergic to milk protein, they nevertheless feed her non-allergenic food suited for her. It helps that lactosefree milk is so widely available in Sweden, alongside lactosefree butter and lactosefree yogurt. And then, the day care itself is the realization of a very important human right, to be found in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to have access to facilities that allow women (and single dads) to balance home and work lives.

As you can probably guess, this a rather personal blog and here I share some notes about some half-thought notions that I currently deal with as a full-time single dad and student of Human Rights at Gothenburg University.