Couples’ decisions on having a first child

We investigate the decision-making process of having a first child, using theories on individualisation, lifestyle choices and negotiating partnerships as a starting point. We compare couples who had their first child at a relatively young age with those who had their first child at an older than average age, using data from semi-structured interviews with 33 couples, selected from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS). Although expecting more explicit decision-making among older parents, our qualitative analyses show that decision-making preceding both early and postponed first childbirth is often implicit. Disagreement between partners does not necessarily lead to discussion. Factors that result in the postponement of childbearing, such as higher education, do not always play a conscious role in people’s decision-making processes.couple decision-making, early parenthood, first birth, Netherlands, postponement of family formation, qualitative analysis

Challenges and Risks of Individualisation in The Netherlands

This article evaluates recent transformations in social policy that reflect the tendency towards individualisation in The Netherlands. Such transformations have taken place in old age pensions, widows’ pensions, social assistance and taxation, and in respect of child support following divorce. Interestingly most reforms have not resulted in ‘full individualisation’, but rather have taken into account the fact that people, in particular women, are not or cannot be assumed to be full-time adult workers. Such a ‘moderate individualisation’, however, is not without risks for women’s economic independence, especially when the developments of the Dutch ‘life course perspective’ on social security are considered

Parenting Support in the Dutch ‘Participation Society’

This article focuses on ‘the turn to parenting’ in the Netherlands and embeds it in a major reform called ‘transition and transformation’. While support for parenting by way of public healthcare and denominational family care and advice has a long tradition in the Netherlands, the field gained new importance in the 1990s under the influence of medical and psychological ‘scientification’ and the introduction of evidence-based methods. Current reforms are modulated with a critique of specialised forms of parent support and (re-)introduce a community- and family-based approach in which professionals are charged with helping families to help themselves and with guiding and supervising volunteers who actually do the job of parenting support. Parenting Support in the Dutch ‘Participation Society’ (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281225099_Parenting_Support_in_the_Dutch_%27Participation_Society%27 [accessed Jan 19, 2016]

Шостий закон Паркінсона і наукова періодика України

The Dutch child protection system has been the target of harsh criticism in recent decades. The legitimacy of child protection services seems to have eroded. In this article, we analyze this changing legitimacy of child protection against the background of declining parental authority and in relation to the disappearance of positive pedagogical ideologies and the mainly bureaucratic response of child protection agencies. Two recent inquiries in the Netherlands on child sexual abuse within child protection-related services have emphasized the position of children as vulnerable victims of negative pedagogical practices, mirroring a general trend of “victimization”. It is concluded that reinforcement of the professional role of child protection workers may be a start towards building new trust in child protection and establishing a newfound legitimacy

The Relationship between Family and Work: Tensions, Paradigms and Directives.

After decades of promoting the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender-equality perspective, to date discourses and related social policy paradigms replace and reframe the once European agenda on gender-equality and put the gender issue in a much broader policy agenda of new social risks. This working paper first states that a gender-neutral social policy on reconciliation of work and family life stagnates because of four crucial dilemmas. New social policy paradigms have developed since the 1990s, each having particular assumptions on risk-sharing, public and private responsibility and the position of the individual vis-à-vis the state and the community. These paradigms will be analysed in relation to the European Union policies regarding reconciliation of work and family life. We will detect some traces of these paradigms in the Lisbon agreements and its amendments. We will conclude that indeed the gender-equality agenda, as well as family life, has been submitted to the new convention of the competitive knowledge based economy; The social investment paradigm is the most prominent of the three paradigms in this new agenda, however it is mixed up with elements from the other paradigms and therefore current policies agendas lack coherence

Twenty years of social policy research on gender

In this overview chapter I will discuss social policy research on gender during the timespan 2000-2020. Understanding social policy research as a multidisciplinary academic field, the focus will be on the question of how gender inequality has been defined, as a social and economic problem or otherwise, how it is framed, what causes it, what policy responses are implemented, and what outcomes it generates. Acknowledging that gender is a heterogeneous category, the chapter will also look at intersectionality. Finally, I will go beyond Clasen and Siegel’s outcome criterion –defined here as gender equality – to see if and how gender is present in social policy research that does not, per definition, take that outcome for granted