Abstract
This thesis presents an analysis of Dutch familiy policies regarding support for parents. Since 1979 successive Dutch governments have argued for public involvement with parental child rearing, by stating that a healthy family life in the process of child rearing is in the interest of society as a whole. At
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the same time public involvement requires justification by the government, as raising a family is considered a primarily private matter. Consequently, policies supporting parents in child rearing are characterised by a tension between restraint and involvement. This thesis attempts to reveal the influence this tension exerts on ideas about good care and the distribution of responsibility in child rearing, as it can be traced in ‘policy stories’ about supporting parents. I argue that, during the eighties and nineties, four policy stories were developed: the story of development, the story of equality, the story of prevention, and the story of control. The last three stories are dominant and they focus on the child’s perspective and the needs of society. They present failures of child rearing as the cause of future child problems, such as educational lacks, behavioural problems and criminal behaviour. These problems in their turn entail high expenses for society in the future. The dominant discourses in which these stories are formulated focus on the development of children. Two themes deserve further attention. Firstly, child rearing plays a crucial role in the causal story lines of the four policy stories but ideas about the practice of upbringing are marginal. Secondly, the voice of parents is missing. It is argued that ideas about parenthood, child rearing and support can be revised from the perspective of an ethic of care by introducing the perspective of parents. The government expects that parents will raise their children to become good citizens. I call this educational citizenship. Nevertheless, their voice is lacking in the policy debate. It is the government who is making judgements about parents. Some parents will have inferior pedagogical skills, and because of support in child rearing they will be able to learn how to educate properly. It is assumed that to most other parents - the largest group - education comes naturally. This implicit expectation of parents as self-educating in the area of child rearing offers a discursive space for care ethics. New impulses in thinking about governmental involvement in raising children are possible, if policy makers take the experiences of parents as the starting point of their policy. A child rearing discourse in which parents are engaged in a learning process, trying to become ‘good enough’-educators is introduced. Parents learn to bring up their children in daily practice by trial and error, and by 'muddling through'. Their learning process can stagnate for longer periods. I call this ’uprooted parenting’. On the basis of literature research I distinguish four types of stagnation which might hinder the parental learning process and which require differentiated forms of support for parents.
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