Trudie Knijn

A matter of facts… and more: an exploratory analysis of the content of sexuality education in The Netherlands

The Netherlands is often recognized for its approach to adolescent sexual health, noted by the countrys low rates of teen pregnancy and high contraceptive use among young people. Different studies have compared the sexual health outcomes of youth in The Netherlands with those of young people in other developed countries, and, to varying degrees, have discussed determinants related to the observed differences. Many have concluded that comprehensive sexuality education is one of the key factors contributing to the positive sexual health outcomes in The Netherlands, but few studies have looked at how Dutch sex education policy is translated into action. There is a lack of information on the content of Dutch sexuality education materials and programs. Such information is necessary for a better understanding of sexuality education in The Netherlands. This article presents a comparison of sexual health outcomes of young people in The Netherlands and the United States using the latest available data. This is followed by results of a content analysis of sexuality education materials in The Netherlands and a case study of a widely used Dutch high school sexuality program.

Transitional Phase or a New Balance?: Working and Caring by Mothers With Young Children in the Netherlands

In recent years in the Netherlands, mothers’ labor participation has increased sharply. This article examines which factors influence mothers’ employment rates and the division of household and caring responsibilities between parents. From research among 1,285 women with young children, it appears that cultural factors rather than economic motives or institutional obstacles offer the most important explanation for whether they work or not. A culture of care dominates more among women with lower than higher education levels, which clarifies the more limited labor participation of lower educated mothers. A comparison is also drawn between the various earner types of family. It appears that the one-and-a-half earner type of family with the man working full-time and the woman part-time is particularly popular among women with lesser education levels. However, for women with higher educations, the ideal is for both parents to work part-time, but for the time being, they have not yet been able to realize this.

The Politics of Sex Education Policy in England and Wales and The Netherlands since the 1980s

Teenage pregnancy rates are extremely high in the UK and extremely low in The Netherlands. Sex education is acknowledged to be a determining factor. While it is by no means the most important factor, it provides a useful comparative lens through which to examine the very different approaches of the British and Dutch to policy-making in this sensitive area. The issue of sex education is controversial in both the UK and The Netherlands, but while the political debate has been fierce in the UK it has been largely absent in The Netherlands. Our research used documentary sources and interviews to investigate the recent history of policy-making on sex education at the central government level; compared a selection of key texts used in secondary schools; and drew on exploratory fieldwork in three English and three Dutch secondary schools. We find that the approach to the issue is in large part determined by the struggle over ideas in respect of the wider issues of change in the family and sexuality. We suggest that the adversarial nature of the politics of sex education in England and Wales results in a message that lacks coherence, which is in turn reflected in what happens in the classroom. We do not advocate any simple attempt at ‘policy borrowing’, but rather highlight the importance of understanding the differences in the nature and conduct of the debate.

Contested Professionalism: Payments for Care and the Quality of Home Care

In the recent past, policy makers have emphasized the benefits and positive aspects of direct payments for care of frail elderly people. In this article, the authors present the theoretical framework of “struggling logics of home care,” by means of which they explore the underlying logics of the introduction of payments for care: market, family, and state. More specifically, the authors show the strengths and weaknesses of a fourth logic—professionalism—and expound how this logic is submitted to marketized and familialized payments for care. The authors conclude that there are indeed some positive aspects of the trend toward payments for care. However, (female) professional home care workers benefit hardly at all. On the long term, this could also erode the quality of care provided to recipients.

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.

Changes in the regulation of responsibilities towards childcare needs in Italy and the Netherlands: different timing, increasingly different approaches

This article comparatively analyses how the responsibilities towards childcare needs have been framed and addressed in Italy and the Netherlands following the increase in women’s labour market participation. According to the authors, the differing developments in these two countries partly disconfirm the thesis according to which facilitating family/work conciliation is at the heart of the new social policy paradigms in all Bismarckian welfare states. This concern has indeed been an explicit driver of social policy changes in the Netherlands, but not in Italy. The authors argue instead that these two countries offer evidence for the thesis that timing matters. Italy has been an ‘early bird’ in changing family law and in putting in place childcare policies, but has not been able to innovate these policies when the economic and social context has changed and, in particular, has not reframed them fully as work-family conciliating policies. The Netherlands, on the other hand, was comparatively late in changing family law and developing parental leaves and childcare policies, the latter being framed largely as work-family conciliation strategies. Following the liberal cultural and political developments of the 1990s, which favoured individualisation and freedom of choice, the changes in the Netherlands systematically introduced an increasing mix of individual, family and market responsibility via both commodification supported by tax expenditure and the underpinning of the one-and-a-half breadwinner model offered by the regulation of protected part-time labour contracts.

Sex Education Materials in The Netherlands and in England and Wales: A comparison of content, use and teaching practice

Sex education in The Netherlands and in the UK [1] has attracted attention because of the huge differences between the teenage pregnancy rates. There are substantial similarities in the way in which sex education is structured in the two countries, and yet the approach to the subject is very different. We used documentary sources and interviews to explore the political debates; compared both science and PSE texts aimed at 14-15- year-olds; and carried out exploratory field work in three secondary schools in each country. While sex education is controversial in both countries, the British debate is adversarial and the Dutch strive to seek consensus, making use of professional sex educators in the process. The difference in approach is reflected in both the sex education materials and the approach taken in the classroom. We conclude that the Dutch are significantly more successful in addressing the problem of ignorance and of promoting a coherent sex education message.

Careful or lenient? Welfare reform for lone mothers in the Netherlands

The 1996 welfare reform that attempted to get lone parents out of social assistance represents a major shift in social policy in the Netherlands. Instead of having the financial right to care for their children, lone mothers are now obliged to earn their living by paid work as soon as their youngest child reaches the age of five. This policy shift is accompanied by additional incentives to support lone mothers in engaging in (part-time) work. Nevertheless, the measure has met considerable resistance among lone mothers as well as the caseworkers and municipalities that have been granted discretionary powers to implement the new law. Several years after its introduction, it can be concluded that the law has not been very successful; only slightly more than one out of ten lone mothers have actually left social assistance. In this article, we explain these meagre results by analysing the assumptions and incentives of the national policies, and by describing the mechanisms of discretion at a local level.

Sources of Income for Lone Mother Families: Policy Changes in Britain and The Netherlands and the Experiences of Divorced Women

The Netherlands and Britain have treated lone mother families in similar ways in the post-war period. Until very recently they have been alone among countries of the EU in allowing lone mothers to draw benefits without making themselves available for work so long as they have dependent children. At the beginning of the 1990s, both countries attempted (unsuccessfully) to enforce the obligation of ‘absent fathers’ to maintain. In 1996, the Dutch government took decisive steps towards treating lone mothers as workers rather than mothers. In Britain, the last Conservative government began to move in the same direction, something that has been confirmed by the new Labour government. This article reviews the structure and characteristics of lone motherhood in the two countries and the nature of the recent policy changes. It then reports the findings of an exploratory qualitative study of divorced mothers in both countries. The evidence from the interviews reveals the strength of the primary commitment that women in both countries make to care. It also shows the difficulties divorced women face in combining paid and unpaid work, which, we suggest make the pendulum swing from treating lone mothers as mothers, to treating them as workers unrealistic.

The ‘meaning’ of children in Dutch and German family policy

At the end of the 20th century, birth-rates had fallen below the replacement rate in many Western countries. Changing attitudes towards having children had resulted in very small families, even in childlessness, giving rise to the Vienna Institute of Demography analyzing EUROSTAT data on the most common reasons for Europeans between the ages of 18 and 39 being childless. Almost half of these young adults (48 per cent) said they did not want children because they had general concerns about the future; another 46 per cent lacked a steady partner, while 44 per cent reported enjoying the current childless lifestyle and believed it would be difficult to fit in children; more than a third of these young(er) adults feared the loss of leisure time. ‘Harder’ facts, such as the expense of having children and job pressures, seemed to matter less for the childless respondents, albeit still more than a third of them gave such reasons (quoted in Theil, 2006, p. 54). Concerns about the future, lifestyle and steady partnership outweigh other worries. The expense of having children, work commitments and related problems in balancing work and family may be further reasons for delaying or foregoing family formation, but are not of prime importance. Societies intent on encouraging young people to have children, and at a younger age, must take both concerns into account, i.e. invent a broad discourse on policies for children and families and at the same time design wide-ranging policies. Do they deliver? Can they deliver?