The Finnish Baby Box

A simple cardboard box helped transform Finland into one of the best places in the world to raise a child.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:40Roman Mars?

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• 1:46Roman Mars?

  Back in May 2018, reporter Olivia Humphries had her first baby. She remembers being in London in a loud, chaotic postnatal ward, waiting to go home. And it was during this time that she was handed a small, drawstring bag.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Inside it, there was a little towel with a brand logo on it, a few tiny samples of baby shampoo and nappy cream, and a ton of coupons for lots of products I'd never heard of, but apparently desperately needed now that I had a new baby. It's always nice to get free stuff, but the bag didn't make me feel better. It just added to the sense that I was woefully underprepared.

• 2:24Roman Mars?

  It was in those first sleepless nights after she returned home with her son that Olivia started to really consider her bag of coupons. Her mind drifted to a better alternative, and she wondered if there was anywhere in the world where new parents were sent home with something more substantial.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  And that's when I found out what new parents in Finland receive.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  A very exciting day for us. Our Finnish baby box has arrived.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  Our package is here. We get two because we have twins.

• 2:57Roman Mars?

  In Finland, new parents also get a package of freebies. But instead of a few sample-sized products and some advertising flyers, they get something else: the Finnish maternity package, or the baby box.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  So let's see what is in here. Ta-da.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Good lord, there's so much stuff in here.

• 3:18Speaker 06

  This is a blanket. Wow. This is beautiful.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Oh my god, it's got bears on it. So soft. Very soft. Oh my gosh. Very, very cute.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  And look, a little toothbrush. They don't have any teeth. Why is this for? For later.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  A Finnish baby box is essentially a large cardboard box full of items for a newborn and its parents. Picture books, nipple cream, warm booties for the freezing Finnish winters. Basically, a starter kit of everything you'll need for the first six months of a baby's life.

• 3:56Roman Mars?

  Virtually every new parent in Finland is eligible to receive one.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  My first thought when I heard this was, of course, it's exactly what you'd expect of Finland: the happiest country on earth, with its widely revered education system and comprehensive welfare state.

• 4:12Roman Mars?

  The Simpsons even has a whole episode making fun of just how frickin' happy the Finnish are.

• 4:17Speaker 07

  Aw geez, I can't afford this. No, it's all free. Free? Who are you people? Well, in Finland, we're not only experts in nuclear power, but for six years in a row, we've been the happiest people in the world. Makes sense. You live so close to Santa Claus.

• 4:34Roman Mars?

  But there's more to the baby box than a nice perk for the happiest parents in the world.

• 4:41Roman Mars?

  In its almost 90 years of existence, the Finnish baby box has been a basic survival tool, a national symbol, and a rite of passage.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  So how did a simple cardboard box become so filled with meaning? To find out, we're going to take a peek inside the cutest little social engineering tool in the world.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  So the story of the baby box begins in Finland in the late 1930s. Finland wasn't in such great shape. That's design historian Michelle Miller Fisher. She told me that when the first baby box came out, Finland was almost unrecognizable.

• 5:19Speaker 06

  The birth rate was declining. Many babies that were born were in ill health, and there was quite a high rate of infant mortality.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  In the early decades of the 20th century, most Finnish were extremely poor. Finland had recently emerged from a brutal civil war, and revolutions in neighboring Russia meant it had also lost its biggest trading partner.

• 5:40Roman Mars?

  Since most of the grain in Finland came from Russia, that loss meant that many people were left starving. Finnish were living in crowded, unsanitary conditions and dying from outbreaks of tuberculosis, smallpox, and measles.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Child mortality in Finland was also higher than in the rest of Europe. Almost 20% of children didn't make it to their fifth birthday.

• 6:03Speaker 06

  And so the Finnish Social Welfare Committee decided that maybe they could design something that would help in part to change this. And that policy intervention looked like, in the end, a set of designed objects within a box.

• 6:18Roman Mars?

  The idea of distributing critical items to new mothers wasn't an entirely original one. Since the 1920s, a Finnish charity had been lending out baskets of baby essentials to the poorest families in Finland.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  The baskets contained clean baby clothes, hand-sewn by volunteers from donated bits of fabric. At the time, it was pretty common for mothers to swaddle their newborns in old rags, and this gave them an alternative. Once the baby grew out of the clothes, the basket was passed on to the next family who needed it.

• 6:50Roman Mars?

  The government used the baskets as a blueprint for something more ambitious. They kept the clean clothes and added basic hygiene items like soap and towels to help slow the spread of disease. And instead of loaning it out, they decided to make the box a gift that families could keep.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  In 1938, they started giving these new packages out to struggling families, not in a basket, but in a cardboard box, a box that doubled as a crib. It has been from the day one that you could put your baby to sleep in the box. That's Anina Kuukka. She works for Kella, the Finnish social security agency. Actually, in the early days, the families were poor, and their houses were small. There wasn't necessarily a safe and clean place to put the baby to sleep, so that's why it was quite important.

• 7:42Roman Mars?

  When World War II broke out just one year later, Finland didn't have fabric to spare for the baby boxes, so the designers had to get creative.

• 7:51Speaker 06

  During the moment of the war years in the 1940s, because of restrictions on materials and because of thrift, some of the clothes were paper rather than fabric.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Clean paper clothes were still better than old rags, and a simple sheet of paper could make a big difference during childbirth.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  In some of the very early baby boxes, there was also the sheet of paper to give birth on, to be able to create an immediate sterile birthing environment in a very low cost but very effective manner.

• 8:22Roman Mars?

  When the war ended, Finnish mothers could thankfully put aside their paper baby clothes. Post-war boxes included fabric and yarn, so moms could simply use all their free time to sew or knit the clothes themselves.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Around this time, Finland also made a change that would become a key feature of the baby box. In 1949, they made the box a universal benefit.

• 8:47Speaker 06

  It was initially given out to people who needed it, and very quickly, from the 1940s, became given to anybody, everybody. It became a citizen's right in Finland.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Most of us are probably familiar with the Nordic countries and their universal welfare programs. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland all provide stronger social support than most other countries in the world. And in Finland, the baby box was one of the first building blocks in creating that system.

• 9:16Roman Mars?

  The Finnish welfare state as we know it began in the aftermath of World War II. Finland, like the rest of Europe, was still recovering from the devastation of war. People had come back from the brink of the end of the world, and across the continent, they were asking themselves, what do we want? What do we value now that we have a chance to make a new world?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  In Finland, one of the strongest new convictions was that families, all families, should have support. Some of the earliest universal policies were focused on child rearing: free school meals, quarterly child payments, and new maternal health clinics opening all over the country.

• 9:55Roman Mars?

  The baby box was actually one way to incentivize pregnant women to use those new health clinics.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  In order to get the box, they would have to attend the maternity and welfare clinics and to get their health checked when they were expecting a baby.

• 10:13Roman Mars?

  The lure of the baby box seems to have worked. By the early 1950s, more than 90% of mothers had registered themselves at the new clinics.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Almost 80 years later, the deal is basically the same. If you visit a prenatal clinic in the first four months of pregnancy, you get the box.

• 10:30Roman Mars?

  What's inside the box, though, changes every year.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Shall we start with the oldest box? Yeah, sure. I visited the office of Kella, the government agency responsible for the box. They've got 40 years' worth of boxes stored away in their warehouse. So this is from 1994. So more than 30 years old. This is the snowsuit. It's very 90s. Yeah, the patterns. Patterns and fabrics. Yeah. Lime green stripes and fluorescent yellow. Yeah, it's very 90s.

• 11:08Roman Mars?

  Today, Anina and her colleague Vera are responsible for deciding what each year's baby box will include. And it's a lot of pressure. Every item they pick out, be it a koala sleeping bag or a dinosaur toothbrush, will be used by thousands of families in thousands of homes all across Finland.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  The process of making those decisions actually begins two years before the box is set to release, when they meet with a group of advisers.

• 11:34Roman Mars?

  The group is essentially a Justice League of baby stuff experts. There's a representative from the maternity and child welfare clinics, another from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, one from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, which sounds like the same words just rearranged.

• 11:51Speaker 07

  And also from the Finnish Safety and Chemical Agency, there's this person who we can consult about the safety issues for the items in the package. So we have these discussions about the items which to include or what are we planning to choose.

• 12:09Roman Mars?

  When it comes to making the final call about what's in each year's box, Finnish law says that all items need to, quote, "provide for the health and well-being of mother and child." And most of the time, the connection between "item" and "well-being" is obvious.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  It would be hard to make an argument against putting in a bath thermometer, say, or a teething toy. But other times, the connection is less about need and more about encouraging certain behaviors.

• 12:37Roman Mars?

  The box has always been about subtly influencing people's decisions. Remember, when the baby box first became a universal benefit, it was because the Finnish government wanted mothers to start going to health clinics for prenatal exams.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  And so despite the box's popularity, it's always carried a degree of tension between the preferences of individuals and the goals of the state. Here's Michelle Miller Fisher again.

• 13:02Speaker 06

  The baby box, for me, is this shining example of a welfare state done right. And yet, almost every object that is designed for the arc of human reproduction is fraught with politics.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Take, for example, one item you won't find in your box: a baby bottle. That's because Finland strongly recommends breastfeeding for the first four to six months. A bottle, in that case, would be unnecessary.

• 13:30Roman Mars?

  Another item where you can see the Finnish government trying to shape behavior is the condoms they included in the 1970s. That's when the Finnish government basically said, "We think family planning is part of a healthy life for everyone. Here's a way you can make a decision about whether or not you want to get pregnant again right now."

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Not everyone appreciated the hint. Here's Tanya Vaticari, professor of history at Tampere University.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Many saw or understood that this would be a good idea. Those who were against thought that the state should not be interfering in those kinds of ways into the families' lives.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  It's an issue that also came up with nappies, or diapers. Early boxes included pieces of fabric that could be folded into diapers. But when the disposable kind got popular in the 1960s, those went into the baby box instead.

• 14:25Roman Mars?

  That is until 2006, when experts decided it would be better for the environment to switch back to cloth diapers.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  And people were very strongly either for or against. Many people thought that these reusable diapers being in the box was the kind of ideological message on part of the state that people should be using these types of nappies more, which was, of course, true. That was the idea.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  So was there a sense of resentment at all, or if people feeling they were being nudged too much?

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Yes, there was. There was exactly that, that they were pushed towards something they did not want to adopt.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  In the end, this particular nudge didn't work. Anina said that the majority of parents reported not using the cloth diapers. So just a few years later, they were out again.

• 15:24Roman Mars?

  The Finnish social security agency, Kella, puts out a survey so that parents can directly voice their opinions about what's in the box. But Anina says that a lot of those discussions play out on internet forums.

• 15:37Speaker 07

  There's a lot of online discussions about the items in the box, and they sometimes fight also about the items.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  A couple of years ago, a blanket wasn't included, and there was an uproar. It had to be brought back by popular demand. So Anina and her colleagues have found little ways to let parents feel like they have more of a say.

• 15:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, actually, we have had, since 2020, we have had this opportunity for our clients to vote which patterns to choose for the overall and for the sleeping bag.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And do people, do a lot of people vote?

• 16:13Speaker 07

  I think last time it was like 10,000 or something like that, so quite many.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Something I kept thinking about while reporting this story is that the box came about at a time when Finnish were poor and infant mortality was a big problem. Now, Finland is consistently ranked among nations with the lowest infant mortality. It's also frequently named as the best country in the world to be a parent.

• 16:40Roman Mars?

  That's partly because of the whole comprehensive package of social support that Finland gives families. Finnish parents have universal healthcare, heavily subsidized childcare, and generous parental leave. But it's also because the box did its job. So does that mean the baby box has outlived its usefulness?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  What would be the reaction if, do you think, if the government took away the baby box?

• 17:07Speaker 07

  It makes people feel, feel a lot of feelings. So I think they would be, they would be quite angry if it would, they would stop it.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  It's beloved.

• 17:19Speaker 07

  Yes, it's beloved.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Parents actually have a choice about whether or not they take the baby box or a cash alternative.

• 17:29Speaker 07

  At this moment, it's 210 euros, cash, or the box.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  But most people choose the box.

• 17:37Speaker 07

  Almost all first-time mothers choose the box.

• 17:41Roman Mars?

  And just like in the early days, many still use that simple cardboard box as a crib. Almost half of Finnish babies, at some point, sleep in the box.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Collecting and unpacking the box has become a rite of passage in Finland. Future grandparents and even great-grandparents might come over to pore over the contents and reminisce over what they received in their boxes. It's very common to find old baby boxes in Finnish garages and attics, filled with favorite items from the box, waiting to be taken out for the next generation.

• 18:12Roman Mars?

  Another reason the baby box remains a constant in Finnish life is the way it lifts the mental load of being a new parent. The box is simple and curated, telling you exactly what you need in order to care for a baby and what you don't.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Having a newborn is tough. Any parent will remember feeling disorientated, anxious, and desperate for sleep, all of which makes you the perfect target for advertisers hawking miracle products.

• 18:43Speaker 06

  If you don't have this, your baby won't be safe, or they won't be healthy, or they won't be smart, et cetera. I mean, obviously, we live in a capitalist society. This is the way in which parents are turned into a demographic or a space of marketing and consumption.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  I've seen ads for an intravaginal speaker to encourage language development while still in the womb. And pillows shaped like giant hands, so your baby feels like they're being held as they sleep. It's so easy to laugh at these products when you're not in the depths of life with a newborn. But at the time, I'd have paid a lot of money for something that guaranteed me a tiny bit more sleep, or the chance to go to the bathroom on my own, or five minutes to drink a hot cup of coffee. In the haze of those early days, it's so hard to tell what you actually need. I spoke about this with a Finnish mother named Mary. When she was pregnant, a friend not from Finland had helpfully sent her a spreadsheet with everything they'd suggest a new parent buys.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  And it was so long of all the possible things that you could need, from clothes to what kind of bathtub to little silver nipple cups that you can, you can wear so that when you're breastfeeding, you're to help with the pain of that. And I was glad that I don't really have to think about that. I could know that all the... The main things were already thought of. And I guess there's the message as well of your baby is sleeping in a box that, you know, that's fine. You know, you don't need fancy things like these are the basics that you really need.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  But even more important than the practical benefit to parents is what the baby box stands for. Eighty plus years after it helped build the foundation of the Finnish welfare system, the box is still inseparable from the culture it helped create.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  The kind of idea that everyone gets the same start to life, I think, is important for Finnish people.

• 20:36Roman Mars?

  The baby box creates a sort of visual equality. There's no stigma in using the items from the box because everybody does, really. It can actually be a problem picking out which child is yours when they're all running around in their identical snowsuits.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  And you kind of know that they're probably around the same age as your baby because, because they're wearing the same stuff. And there's something about, definitely something about the shared experience that, you know, everyone in Finland will have gone through of, of getting this box and, and using the same things and that knowing that everyone's getting kind of quality items.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  There are really few more powerful equalizers than having everyone start life sleeping in an identical cardboard box. And I can't help but feel a little awe that this program that started so many years ago has persisted all this time.

• 21:28Roman Mars?

  The current right wing government is making deep cuts to everything from housing support, unemployment benefits, healthcare and child benefits. But no one from any political party is seriously talking about getting rid of the box. It is just too much of an icon.

• 21:43Speaker 06

  There's something incredibly beautiful about looking at a society, looking at this promise that a government makes to its people, that it takes from its taxes. So it's a people making this promise to, to themselves as well, that we will provide for the newest, the most vulnerable, the tiniest, the most promising people in our society, because it's paying it forward, but it's also paying it back to ourselves. It's investing in this larger, yeah, social compact or social agreement that we have with one another.

• 22:16Roman Mars?

  The concept of baby boxes is now spread across the world. There are versions of the box in Chile, South Africa, Canada and Scotland.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Michelle actually received a Scottish box. It's full of what one of her mentors called humble masterpieces. Everyday objects that seem unremarkable, but are nonetheless worthy of celebration.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  I love the sling that is in there. So there's a, just a long, it's not a constructed sling, it's just a long piece of fabric, several yards of very stretchy gray, heather gray fabric.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  In one of Michelle's earliest pictures of her daughter, March, she's just a few days old and she's being carried in that sling by her dad, Austin.

• 22:59Speaker 06

  It took us, we did seven rounds of IVF to have our daughter and it was the only pregnancy that actually worked. And so we waited years to have her. And this picture that I have of Austin, he just, he looks so happy. It's making me feel emotional even now because it's just so special.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  This is the paradox of the baby box. It's full of practical items, boring items even, but that box and all its mundane contents connect you to the most profound moments of your life. And in Finland, to generations of parents before you, all of them tucking their newborn children into the humble masterpiece of a simple cardboard box.

• 23:49Roman Mars?

  After the break, Olivia Humphries takes us on a tour of baby boxes around the world.

• 24:02Roman Mars?

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• 26:45Roman Mars?

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• 27:19Roman Mars?

  We're back with Olivia Humphries. Hey, Olivia.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Hey, Roman, how you doing?

• 27:23Roman Mars?

  I'm good, I'm good. So at the end of the story, you mentioned that there are baby box projects in other parts of the world too.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for decades, the Finnish baby box was really the only game in town. But in the last 20 years or so, that's changed. I spoke to Dr. Anna Rina Koyvu, who's a researcher at Tamperay University in Finland. And she did the first global study that maps baby box projects around the world. And she said she and her co-authors were kind of amazed at how far and wide that idea of the baby box had spread.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  We were really surprised and it was also a lovely surprise. We found over 90 projects all around the world in about 60 countries, places like Papua New Guinea. There were several in Africa, Latin America, and also Southeast Asia and so on.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  So there have now been baby box schemes on every continent except Antarctica.

• 28:20Roman Mars?

  That's a slacken. So, but are all these baby boxes like universal programs like the, like the Finnish one?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Actually, there's only two other countries where all pregnant women in the nation are eligible to get a box and that's Chile and Scotland. Some of the other projects are for pregnant women in a particular geographical area, in a state or in a city, for instance. And then others are even more targeted to the people who need it.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Very specific vulnerable groups like first time moms. Sometimes these are low income moms, women in jail, refugee moms or HIV positive moms.

• 29:00Roman Mars?

  And this is more like the original Finnish baby boxes. Like this is support going for the people who need the most support.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Right, but unlike in Finland, most of these programs aren't actually run by the state. Some of them are, but the vast majority are run by research groups or hospitals, NGOs, nonprofits or private parties, or by United Nations agencies like UNICEF.

• 29:25Roman Mars?

  And how similar are the boxes themselves to the Finnish ones?

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Obviously, these boxes are being used in totally different contexts and so they have been adapted a lot, which is kind of the beauty of the baby box, I think, is such a flexible idea. In fact, one of the things that Anna Rina learned is that in some places, the box isn't even a box.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  We talk about baby box because it's a sort of a common name that is often used, but not all baby boxes are boxes. And not all baby boxes should be boxes either, because it's very important that the baby box is appropriate for that context.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  So one of those instances where a cardboard box just didn't make sense was in South Africa. The box there was designed for mothers in a poor settlement and a cardboard box was just not robust enough to work in that context where there are insects and rats and it's very humid.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  So they decided that it makes more sense to put the items in a bathtub and that bathtub was used then for washing the baby.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  A plastic baby bath also made sense because in South Africa it's the norm for parents to co-sleep with babies. So the project designers thought a bathtub would get more use than a crib. And then in other places, boxes weren't used because they had negative connotations in that culture.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  For instance, in Malavian culture, where they first sort of considered a cardboard box that was not supported by the mothers because it resembled a coffin. So it was not a good choice for a baby box and the programme opted for a baby basket instead.

• 31:15Roman Mars?

  That makes complete sense. So you have baskets, you have bathtubs. What else do you have?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  So even if they didn't go with the box, a lot of the projects borrowed that idea from Finland of the container having its own use. So there have been buckets for washing clothes in, bags that can double up as a kind of sling, bamboo rocking cradles in India.

• 31:36Roman Mars?

  And in terms of what's inside the box or the basket or the bucket, presumably that changes a lot too, depending on the environment.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  I mean, some of it is the same. There's usually some basic hygiene items like soap, lots of clothes, obviously appropriate for the climate. You don't get many insulated mittens in Sub-Saharan Africa like you do in Finland. But if it's an area where, say, malaria or Zika are prevalent, then boxes might include a mosquito net. Or if the mother can't access a hospital very easily, then there might be items to make delivery at home safer, like a sterile razor blade to cut the umbilical cord or a plastic sheet to give birth on.

• 32:15Roman Mars?

  I mean, this is kind of the equivalent of the paper sheet from the early Finnish baby boxes.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 32:20Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah. And are there conditions with getting these other boxes in other countries? Like in Finland, you mentioned that, you know, they have to attend a prenatal appointment, you know, is the same for other projects?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, the baby boxes almost always come with strings attached. And that's kind of the point of a lot of these programmes. They're trying to get babies into the healthcare system. So in Zambia, for instance, you can't get the box unless you give birth at a healthcare facility. And in Mexico, you can only get the box once you've registered your baby's birth.

• 32:51Roman Mars?

  And so which country is most like the classic Finnish baby box?

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Probably Scotland. The scheme's been going there for about a decade and it's been really popular ever since it started. Take-up's been around 90%. So that's roughly the same as Finland.

• 33:08Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  But when it was first brought in, there was some controversy, particularly around that idea of babies sleeping in cardboard boxes.

• 33:15Roman Mars?

  Okay. What happened?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Well, the right-leaning Scottish Sun newspaper tried to turn public feeling against it. They actually made a video, which they've now deleted, where they set fire to the box to show that it was flammable.

• 33:29Roman Mars?

  They wanted to demonstrate on YouTube that a cardboard box was flammable.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And actually, because the box is made from this kind of heavy-duty corrugated cardboard, it actually took seven minutes of concerted effort with a lighter to set it on fire. So it wasn't quite the gotcha that they were looking for.

• 33:48Roman Mars?

  Yeah. And obviously, it didn't have much effect if 90% of people are taking the boxes.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they also weren't convinced about the boxes not being safe to sleep in. So about 40% of people use it for babies to sleep in, just like in Finland.

• 34:03Roman Mars?

  So you mentioned that new boxes and new box programmes are cropping up all the time. What's the latest place to get a baby box or have a programme like this in the works?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  So New York Mayor Zora and Mam Darni had a proposal for baby baskets for all newborns in the city as part of his campaign last year.

• 34:20Roman Mars?

  That sounds like him.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Wales actually has just started a government-funded programme as well. But at the moment, it's only for babies who are in the most deprived parts of the country. And the response really highlights one of the problems with these targeted projects, which is that people are saying anecdotally that they might not use the clothes that are in the box because they feel like there's a stigma attached. So it's kind of the opposite of that feeling of togetherness and belonging that people in Finland describe.

• 34:48Roman Mars?

  And for people who are listening who like really want to get their hands on a baby box, like this all sounds great, but they don't live in New York or Wales or Scotland or Chile and all these fantastic places. Do you have advice for them?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  So Keller, who are the government department who are responsible for giving out the box in Finland, they get emails all the time, they say, from people who would love to pay for a box. But it's illegal for Keller to sell the box because it's a state benefit.

• 35:13Roman Mars?

  Right. It's just like it's illegal for me to listen to BBC Sounds in the United States.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, sorry about that. But inevitably, some canny entrepreneurs have spotted that there's a gap in the market and they've started selling commercial baby boxes. One of the first companies doing that was founded by three Finnish dads. And they just started off pretty much including what was in the Keller boxes. But then they started getting feedback from customers in Australia who didn't have much use for the snowsuit. And they switched it so that you'd get different stuff depending on where in the world you are.

• 35:46Roman Mars?

  Yeah. So it's complicated to make an internationally appropriate baby box. Yeah, yeah. So they're not exactly flying off shelves.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Not really. One issue is that in the United States, back in 2021, it became illegal to sell a cardboard box marketed as a sleeping space for a baby because it was decided it just didn't meet safety guidelines. But even in other parts of the world, a lot of the businesses who sell these boxes seem to have gone bust after a few years. And obviously, I don't know why that's happened exactly, but I do wonder if the appeal of the box is really that sense of being cared for and being part of something. And that's what people want a piece of. And you just don't get that feeling from a box that's been sold to you by a commercial company. It just loses a lot of the magic and it's just kind of a cardboard box full of clothes that you didn't choose.

• 36:32Roman Mars?

  Yeah. This is so much fun. Thank you so much for doing the story for us.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Roman.

• 36:44Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible was reported this week by Olivia Humphries, edited by Kelly Prime, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real and George Langford, fact checking by Graham Hesha. Special thanks this week to Pia Vorokovsky, as well as Mary's mom, Tina. Kathy Too is our executive producer. Kirk Colstead is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laishma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradler, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks

• 37:25Roman Mars?

  north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our own Discord server, there's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

• 37:52Roman Mars?

  This episode is presented by Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort from start to finish. Enjoy priority check-in and boarding, followed by access to peaceful lounges. Onboard, savour menus created by renowned French chefs, paired with wines and champagne selected by sommelier. Stay connected with free high-speed wifi. Then unwind in a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with a mattress topper developed with Sofitel My Bed, a signature touch of French hospitality. The art of travel elevated because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure,

• 39:16Speaker 00

  numbness, coolness, pain or colour changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-8334-NURTC or visit nurtc.com. All right, back to your podcast playlist or whatever's keeping you going today.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  One sweet melty bite of a Hershey's bar and suddenly I'm right back sitting on the front porch with my grandmother on a slow summer afternoon. She doesn't say much, just breaks the bar in half and hands me a piece. I open my mouth to say whatever a nine-year-old wants to say. And she replies with a low, "Shh, listen." So we sat there, listening. That was the first time I learned that quiet can feel full.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Hershey's, it's your happy place.