ABSTRACT
As a child in Stockholm’s crowded, working-class neighborhoods, Alva became aware of class conflict as the labor movement and the Social Democratic Party struggled for a living wage, political representation, and basic social services. She noticed the discrepancies between her family’s relative comfort and her schoolmates’ abject poverty, as well as the contrast between the warmth in their families and the restraint in her own. Her mother was especially distant from the children, never expressing affection physically or verbally. Alva admired her father and his ideals, but only with her sister Rut did she find comfort. In school, she did not strive to excel, but sought above all to fit in. As Alva reflected on her childhood from the vantage point of middle age, she was struck by her mother’s negative judgments of her as selfish, stubborn, and sullen, which she had internalized. Plagued by a pervasive sense of guilt, she became a perfectionist. Above all, she was taught to put others’ needs ahead of her own.
