Tue, 9 February 2010
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Family life is alive and well in the Netherlands. Researchers concluded this week that Dutch family ties remain close. Who would have thought it in these times of individualism, increased mobility and supposed indifference?But take a closer look at the findings and you'll discover that the foundation for this familial bond is primarily economic. Emotions remain tucked out of sight.
The Netherlands' Family Affairs Minister André Rouvoet was all smiles on Thursday when he was presented with an academic report that underscores the Christian ideal of the happy family. The setting couldn't have been more appropriate: Madurodam, "the Netherlands in miniature", a fun day out for all the family.
"The family is still very much in the picture," concludes one of the report's writers, Joop Schippers. The conclusions are based on an extensive survey of almost 10,000 Dutch families.
Radius
It reveals that 50 percent of children continue to live within a 10-kilometre radius of their parents when they grow up. They take care of their own children and care for their parents as long as possible, in most cases only resorting to professional care when there is no other solution at hand.
In previous decades, sociologists had declared the Dutch family dead. In the 1970s and 1980s, the family was portrayed as an outmoded, repressive and primarily bourgeois organisational model, while in the 1990s the family was seen as making way for the calculating individual.
In de tuin met de familie (In the garden with family)
Weren't we living in a country where we deposited our parents in old folks' homes to serve out their twilight years in isolation once their economic usefulness was spent? These claims would appear to have been greatly exaggerated; the family stands firm and the child-parent relationship remains as close as ever.
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