For example, such bourgeois virtues as economic planning, rationality, advanced technical know-how, combined with diligence and thriftiness, have always been indispensable values for small farmers who had to survive in a hostile climate from one harvest and grazing season to the next. Moreover, the strong position of women, based on productive work, has been handed down from rural mothers to their urban daughters. The family model where the man provided for a wife who stayed at home has never been widespread in Finland. T he question of the way a girl prepares herself for the life of a women excites many folklorists. Studies of young females is in fact one of the areas of emphasis in Finnish cultural research in the 1990s.
Girls start getting intrested in finding a partner very early in life.
Issues related to male-female relationships can be construed and rehearsed with illustrated books of personal thoughts which girls compile and lend to each other. The topics which girls ponder over most are love, sexuality and differences between the sexes. A lthough boys and girls can mix together very freely in Finland, girls still carry the heavier responsibility in a relationship and contribute more to the emotional side of it. Folklore studies show that broken hearts and loss of reputation are not things of the past. A surprise has been that they affect very young children of pre-pubescent age or in early pubescence.