‘The interests of the child’ seen from the child's perspective: the case of the Netherlands

Abstract

The Dutch government has decided to intervene in parents’ role in bringing up their children by imposing compulsory parenting support. As such an intervention has to be legitimatised as being ‘in the interests of the child’, it is important to take a closer look at this concept. First it is shown that it is not evident that the government has the right to intervene in this way. Within the ‘child–parents–government’ triangle three protective shells of self-determination can be distinguished. One of these three shells protects the freedom of childrearing of the parents. Second, ‘the interests of the child’ are seen from a pedagogical perspective. This concept is explored within the framework of the so-called ‘pedagogical relationship’, a core concept in the continental tradition of educational theory. It is shown that the pedagogical relationship is indeed completely ruled by the interests of the child. Third, the question is raised why the Dutch government is so eager to intervene in the parents’ role given the fact that the UNICEF overview of child well-being shows that the Netherlands leads the world ranking and scores in the top 10 of all measured dimensions. These philosophical and empirical arguments are apparently not considered to be convincing. Hopefully, the decision of the Dutch government will be reconsidered seriously if the results of the interventions prove unsatisfactory in the coming years.

Keywords:

• parenting support
• interests of the child
• childrearing
• government intervention

Notes

1. There is broad political support for these plans in the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament. The Secretary of State was speaking on behalf of the new Cabinet and her plan was an expanded version of a motion proposed by VVD party leader, Mark Rutte, who is now on the opposition benches. Meanwhile, it has become clear to the Secretary of State that even she has underestimated the opportunities for compulsion.

2. In March 2007, the Secretary of State proposed to close down the Islamic primary schools El Farouq Omar, Abraham El Khaliel en At Taqwa, all three in Amsterdam. She wrote that the financial and qualitative situation of the SIBA-schools (SIBA: Foundation of Islamic Primary Schools) was extremely troublesome and the administrative context very unquiet. On June 6, she wrote that the schools had to close for good. http://religie.blog.nl/nederland/2007/03/05/drietal-islamitische-basisscholen-moeten-waarschijnlijk-sluiten (retrieved 30 June 2007).

3. There is a new compulsory education act in the pipeline, the main aim of which is to impose further restraints upon private schools, i.e. those which do not receive government subsidy. The legislation is aimed at ‘free schools’ but the new law has an unintended side effect in that a number of conservative Christian schools will also come under closer government scrutiny and this has led to protests from that quarter.

4. I have discussed the fact that the deficiencies of the policy on eliminating educational disadvantage have been frankly admitted by experts and supporters of that policy in Levering (2006). The remarkable tenacity of those who continue to argue for it despite the evidence is entirely due to the reasoning ‘If the medicine does not work, you just have to administer a higher dose’. On the failure of preschool to have an effect, see for instance Driessen and Doesburg (2003). With reference to the work of Utrecht researchers Cathy van Tuijl and Renate Siebes, on 23 March 2007, the outcomes of the Step-up Programme in the primary school years were presented to the press under the headline ‘Only preschool programme with demonstrable long-term effects’. The happy researchers perhaps did not realise how fatal that headline was for the claims made up to now for the outcomes of preschool in general.

5. The widespread support for more government intervention in childrearing and education in the Dutch population that I earlier in this article said we could expect to be forthcoming is certainly not backed up by the 149 reactions to the Telegraaf interview with Councillor Geluk. After struggling through the mass of ranting and abusive language that these internet reactions are so full of, I counted a mere 22 frank expressions of support for Geluk's compulsory parenting courses for young parents. As well as the 23 who objected on principle, I found 21 who were against it because they did not think good parents should suffer for the sins of the bad, and 15 who blamed the government for making it impossible for parents to raise children through its labour market policy. The other 68 opponents used a great variety of other arguments. http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/58480421/_Jonge_ouders_naar_opvoedcursus_html?p=2,1 (retrieved 15 February 2007).

6. See the Editorial in this special issue, by Ramaekers and Suissa, for a clarification of the use of this (and related) concepts.

7. Take for instance the influential 1998 book The nurture assumption. Why children turn out the way they do by the American psychologist Harris (1998) with the message: parents matter less than you think and peers matter more. With ‘matter’ she means exclusively ‘psychologically influence’. But in terms of the pedagogical relation parents matter in a lot more respects.

8. Koops (2000) does that very explicitly. The essence of the different insights of developmental psychologists like Koops and educationalists concerns the question whether aims of upbringing can or cannot be derived from knowledge of child development. Most educationalists do not think they can, because they realise that statements about the aim of upbringing are always normative statements. Developmental psychologists often believe that they can and they mask the fact-norm problem by replacing terms like ‘aims of upbringing’ with confusing concepts like ‘developmental tasks’.

9. For the problems that even an open definition of purpose like this can lead to, see Levering (1986).

10. The Ministry of Justice is working with the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the Association of Provincial Authorities (IPO) (on behalf of the provinces and metropolitan areas), the youth service sector organisation (MO-groep) (on behalf of youth service agencies), the Child Care and Protection Board and the Council for the Judiciary on a wide-ranging project under the title Beter Beschermd [Better Protected].

11. The Council for the Judiciary, for instance, in its response of 15 June 2004 to the draft of Beter Beschermd [Better Protected] was already arguing for the scrapping of the qualification ‘serious’ in front of ‘threat’ in the grounds for family supervision orders.

12. This study, based on 30 years of research, claims that in more unequal rich countries outcomes are substantially worse for each of 11 different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies and child well-being. Statistics are given for 23 of the top 50 rich countries and for 50 states of the USA.

13. For the reports, see www.kinderenintel.nl

14. ‘Children from families with problems should be able to be placed under supervision at an earlier stage. Legislation will be introduced in Parliament which will allow the juvenile courts, before there is a serious threat to the child's development, to impose a lighter measure such as compulsory parenting support’. Coalition agreement between the parliamentary groups, the Christian Democrats, the Dutch Labour Party and the Christian Union, p. 29 (7 February 2007).

15. The considerations described here come from the Explanatory Memorandum to the amendment of Book 1 of the Civil Code in connection with the Child Protection Measures (Amendment) Act. (13 March 2007).

16. In the UNICEF research, for the ‘subjective well-being’ dimension, young people were also asked for their own opinion about their health and whether they liked going to school. Questions like this are supposed to make the findings of the study ‘more objective’ in some sense.