Children

Fellow Citizens

Micha De Winter

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315348933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

However smart they are, from a social perspective children do not really count until maturity. Then all of a sudden society expects responsibility, independence and in particular, commitment. This viewpoint, shared by so many children and young people today, is the basis of much disaffection among youth. This miscalculation, and how to combat it, is the major theme of this book. The social qualities expected of young people do not come to them automatically. Children need to be guided through social experiences to develop responsibility and commitment. The most effective way to inculcate these qualities is to involve children through their active participation in their education and welfare. The book reviews the theoretical framework for participation by children and young people, and discusses fields of practice where participation is of great importance - including local youth policy, education and professional youth care. Micha de Winter is a professor of child care and in this book he draws on his many years of experience to produce a work which is authoritative, inspiring and convincing. Children as Fellow Citizens is essential reading for those involved in youth and social policy, educators and social scientists, as well as social service and health care professionals.

Part One

1 The young: a generation full of problems

Introduction

In 1992 two government agencies in the Netherlands, the Socio-Cultural Planning Agency (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau SCP) and the Scientific Advisory Board on Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid WRR) each published a study on the situation of the young in the Netherlands. The two reports differ considerably in tone, but the factual findings are roughly the same: the greater part, some 80%, of young people are doing well in various respects, but some 20% have considerable problems (ter Bogt & van Praag, 1992; Diekstra, 1992). There is, however, a striking contrast between the conclusions drawn from each study: whereas the Socio-Cultural Planning Agency concludes that young people are generally doing well, an image of woe prevails in the WRR report. There has been much speculation and discussion on the background to this considerable difference in interpretation (cf. van Praag, 1993; Diekstra, 1993; Meeus, 1993). Here, however, the discrepancy as such is more important than the reasons as it shows that concepts about young people may be evoked more or less independently of the true situation. If this is the case to such an extent with research workers, we should have few illusions about the factual basis of images current among social workers, policy makers, politicians and the general public. A strong preoccupation with problems characterizes the present socio-political climate with regard to today’s young people. Although the media and commerce do their best with catchy slogans to define this phase of life as ‘enjoying freedom, adventure, a beautiful body and a life without cares ‘ (Dieleman & Perreijn, 1993, page 16), the same media almost daily give us cause for alarm with their items on the disinterest and lack of standards, on vandalism, materialism, dropping out of school and criminality among ‘the young’.

‘Young people cause problems, young people have problems’-, a statement made by the Netherlands Government in a recent policy document (Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Cultural Affairs WVC, 1993). Research workers in this field also sounded the alarm. Based on a number of literature studies² Meeus (1993) concludes that post-war research has been strongly oriented towards ad hoc handling of problems, towards problem youngsters and sub-sectors of the world of the young. On the basis of research into problem youngsters the whole generation is thus declared a problem category. Of course all this is not to imply that no problems exist, or that they should be played down. There is ample reason for society to be concerned about some young people. About one fifth contending with serious problems is no small matter³. Moreover the rise in this percentage between 1970 and 1990 is a reason for action. The generalization of these problems, in the public’s conception of large groups of children and young people, requires critical analysis, however. Onesided, disproportionate attention given to the negative aspects of youth may be considered a threat to the social and educational climate in which they grow up. After all, looking at young people through problem-tinted spectacles impedes one’s view of their positive qualities and potential. This is why it is important to discover the sources of the culture of problems that has developed around children and young people. In this chapter we ask ourselves why in the course of history adults have so strongly stressed the difficulties that young people have, and cause. To what extent does an actual occurrence of problems play a part? Taking three types of children who serve as models for the thinking about young people by today’s society, we shall examine how this problematization works nowadays.

Historical backgrounds to the youth problem

History of the family and upbringing

During the past decades heated debates have been held on the question as to how the treatment of young people by adults has developed in history. Some historians say that adult compassion towards the young has grown in the course of centuries, others conclude that on the contrary ‘loving’ children is more a kind of constant factor in human evolution. We shall not enter into this historians’ debate in detail. We shall just listen to a few authoritative voices to indicate the direction into which the association of grown-ups and young people has evolved. Lloyd DeMause (1974) used an extensive study of source material to develop a division into historical phases of parental behaviour towards children. According to him, up to the beginning of the Middle Ages parents did not flinch from killing their children if circumstances demanded; until the thirteenth century it was not unusual to get rid of them in various ways (giving away, abandonment). From that period onwards however, parental empathy grows: until 1600, it is true, an ambivalent attitude prevails (interest and subjection), but gradually this attitude changes into educational practices in which the feelings of and for the child play an ever greater part. According to DeMause the eighteenth century is characterized by a recognition of the typical character of the child as one who deserves special interest and attention, but whose urges must be checked and obedience enforced. In the following century ‘control’ is gradually replaced by ‘socialization’; education takes on the character of guidance to adulthood, the child has to learn to meet the demands the world makes on it. The last phase, according to DeMause, starts after the First World War. Parents increasingly address the child’s needs and thus become its helper and servant.

Although DeMause’s work has frequently been criticized, among other things because of his one-sided psychological interpretations⁴, many other authors in general share his ideas on the direction of historical shifts. Since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the attitude towards children seems to have been subject to significant changes. One of the most radical points of view is held by Philippe Aries, who more or less denies the existence of a separate juvenile world before the beginning of modern times (Aries, 1987). In his view there was hardly any question of upbringing in the Middle Ages, because children from about the age of seven were incorporated in the adult world without a clear transitional phase. He contrasts this period with the Hellenic era, in which there was a clear demarcation between the worlds of adults and children, marked by initiation rites, training and education. According to Aries the period of upbringing, and with it the modern child, finally came into being by the end of the seventeenth century. Under the influence of the clergy parents were persuaded that they themselves were responsible for the spiritual and physical welfare of their children. Parental care led to the development of a new type of affective relations (‘loving care’) between parents and children; parents had the moral duty to prepare children, girls as well as boys, for adult life. Children were obliged to attend school, under a strict regime, and shut off from the outside world⁵.

Historian Linda Pollock (1983) however believes that parents’ love of their children is not such a modern phenomenon. From her study, covering the period from 1500-1900, she draws the conclusion that strong ties between parents and children have to be considered a historical continuity. Noordman & van Setten (1989) put this division into perspective by pointing out the changes in the conditions that have shaped the interaction between parents and children through the centuries: ‘the question is not whether parents in the past did or did not love their children, the question is rather whether in the past they always commanded sufficient insight, knowledge and material possibilities to shape the emotional ties with their children in the modern way’ (page 153). The fact that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries very many children were abandoned, cannot in their view simply be interpreted as lack of parental love, but should be seen as the inevitable consequence of extreme poverty among large parts of the population. The same applies to the employment of young children in the production process or in households. The fact that children often had to do heavy work and put in long hours from the age of six, had to do with bitter economic necessity rather than with parental indifference. Even well into the twentieth century many poor families could hardly afford the luxury of a protective youthland. For the time being this was a privilege of the well-to-do, in whose circles a clear tendency has indeed been observed, since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to spend more time and attention on care and education. The Enlightenment ideal of the practically unlimited possibilities to educate children (see Chapter 4) was an important source of inspiration. This intensification of education could only take shape within the less well-off part of the population when the elementary conditions of life also improved somewhat, for instance in the form of better housing. The changes in the relations between children and parents are therefore strongly associated with the conditions in which people live, and large differences in the rate of development are apparent in different social environments. Nevertheless it can be argued that in the course of centuries education has increasingly turned into a special activity. On the one hand parents were held more strictly responsible for upbringing, on the other hand they themselves began to feel that they had such a responsibility.

Civilization and professionalization

Elias (1982) sees these changes in the relationship between parents and children against the background of a wider process of civilization. In the course of European history, affected by the formation of nation-states, the monopolization of violence by the state, economic differentiation and changes in power and class relations, people have become increasingly interdependent. Such social changes, accompanied by changes in the nature of human relationships, have also had a far-reaching influence on the development of the personality structure of successive generations. This psychic and relational process of civilization is particularly characterized by the increasing control of human passions; people learn to rein in spontaneous passions and to relate their own actions to the consequences for others. This transformation, which in fact also takes place within individual development, moves from high to low and from without to within. Rules and standards first come into being in elitist circles, are then imposed on and adopted by lower strata, and are gradually internalized. This process has far-reaching consequences, especially for the relations between parents and children. Since the regulation of emotions and behaviour has become a critical sign of individual civilization and at the same time a condition for achieving social status, family education is becoming more and more important. Self-control as a social standard requires careful disciplining of children, because their misbehaviour poses a threat to the cultural level and prestige that parents are trying to acquire. At the same time that education was being intensified, the physical gap between parents and children was increasing. If they were to civilize the young, they had to shield them from everything that could threaten their childish innocence, such as sexuality. Moreover teachers increasingly took over socializing tasks from the family. In fact school offered to prepare children for adulthood by keeping them at a distance from harsh reality for a longer time.

de Swaan (1989) also relates the evolution of human relationships to larger processes of social change. The development of social amenities such as education, health services and social security are at the core of his analysis. He views the creation of public services and the resulting professional regimes as the outcome of the social struggle that took place between the various elitist groups (the Establishment). These groups endeavoured to avert the threat posed by the poor, and at the same time to exploit the possibilities of cheap and disciplined labour. The spread of primary education, for instance, was accompanied by fierce conflicts between municipal elites and the burgeoning state machinery on the one hand, and the landed gentry and the clergy on the other. It was not so much the educational ideas that were at stake, but the possibilities education afforded to control and regulate the poor. Conservative circles have always been extremely afraid of any subversive effect general education could have on the common people. In contrast, their opponents stressed the opportunities for improvement: education for the general population could eliminate the ‘bias, stubbornness and rebelliousness of the peasants and put an end to idleness and vice in the young, while a better understanding of the moral basis of society could even prevent a rising of the masses’ (ibid., page 66).

The organization of collective social amenities has been accompanied, particularly in the present century, by the rise of professional elites that came to occupy a mediatory position between state and population. For instance, medical and educational regimes were gradually established, and to a considerable extent began to structure the needs, behaviour and problems of the population. More and more realms of life fell under the direct control of experts. Education is a case in point because it did not only lay a heavy claim on young people’s time, but at the same time thrust numerous arrangements and standards upon the family. Personal lives were also greatly influenced by the indirect effects of these professional regimes. People learned to translate their experiences and problems within the framework of notions handed out to them by experts. While this ‘protoprofessionalization’ facilitated client access to professionals, it also enabled professionals to enlarge their domains. Gradually lay people appropriated the abstract language of the experts, so that these regimes were not experienced as actual coercion. By now this protoprofessionalization has become a kind of cultural hallmark. Parents have learned to regard their children as potential carriers of disturbance or problems; they ‘know’ how great their own influence is on the origin and prevention of such problems (de Winter, 1986). And children also learn that they have an active share in the relational problems arising between them and their parents. For instance, in the subject ‘care’, as introduced in the new curriculum for the lower forms of secondary schools, the course of the pupil’s development and the family conflicts that may be part of it are addressed at some length.

Post-structuralist theoreticians like Foucault (1975) and Donzelot (1979) point out the regulating and productive effect emanating from these professional regimes. Their strength is not so much in the prescribing of new educational or therapeutic methods, but in the creation of an ostensibly neutral argument that gave problems a psychological meaning. People who do not observe generally accepted standards are no longer excluded; they are first problematized and subsequently fitted in and integrated into society, albeit by persuasion and preferably of their own free will. This ‘psycomplex’ provided both a language and a practice that enabled intervention in families without this being experienced as coercion. Thus authorities could steer family life in the right direction, experts could extend their domain, and mothers in particular rose in esteem because their responsibility for raising children was increasingly appreciated. The sociologist Ingrid van Lieshout criticizes this view, notably because of the one-sided influence it ascribes to experts. In this context she prefers to speak of the advent of a ‘problem culture’, in which experts as well as laity are continuously oriented towards all potential problems in all conceivable realms of life. She stresses potential problems since cultural susceptibilities address not only tangible difficulties, but especially ‘problems that may arise in the future, problems experienced by others and/or problems that occurred in the past’ (van Lieshout, 1993).

Greater empathy of parents with children, civilization, proto-profession-alization and a gradual postponement of adulthood: this is the picture sketched so far of the historical changes that have occurred with regard to young people. These developments may be considered significant conditions for the process of the problematization of young people as put forward at the beginning of this chapter. Under the influence of such change...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One
• Index