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Socialization and Civil Society - Micha de Winter - Summary Chapter 1,3,4,5
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Chapter 1 – Politics as supernannyAntinomies of childrearing, tension between:
Freedom vs. restraint
ideal vs. actual reality
conveyance of the culture into which a child is growing vs. the renewal of that culture
Successful childrearing is nowadays equated with the regulation of behaviour, instead of about
fundamental and normative questions.
‘Effective parenting’ is easily measured and creates the illusion that child-rearing problems can be
quickly manipulated by evidence-based methods. But regulating behaviour has little to do with
bringing up children, for it turns upon far more complex matters (e.g. forming of personality).
Short-term behavioural approach
However, currently referred to as individual behavioural dysfunctions, also have a significant
cultural and collective component. Current interventions only focus on a limited part of the whole
spectrum of possible causes, mostly at the level of individual behaviour. Larger causes remain
virtually untouched.
Simplification and polarization
Politicians are preoccupied with two interwoven notions: incompetent parents and disobedient
children. The alleged incompetence of parents is automatically assumed to be the cause of various
problems occurring in society.
The main idea: regime at home & school is too soft. Pressure should be put on parents in order to deal
with their children’s problems. Freedom-restrictive interventions are wanted.
Shift in debates – politicians slowly discover that their policies are too one-sided. They discover the
interactive nature of problems (example problems nuisance neighbourhood). This spurs the impulse
for a new type of solution.
Dangers polarization
- It sets groups against each other and can cause stigmatization
- Positions are so firmly drawn that there is no room for negotiation
The restriction of freedom, of parents and youth, seems to have become the main pedagogical theme
over our time. Freedom is apparently no longer a positive value that one should promote by means of
education and upbringing, but rather a right that holds more for some than others.
The thought of a uni-dimensional school of thought that can solve the complex dilemmas surrounding
child-upbringing should be tossed aside.
Isaiah Berlin and the two concepts of freedom
Negative freedom – freedom from restriction by others. Restrict authority.
Positive freedom – the giving of content to life and society, free of coercion. Achieve authority.
The present-day political and social debates about child-upbringing turn exclusively within the
conceptual space of negative freedom. Prevailing idea seems to be that the space of negative freedom
has become too generous and that this space must be curtailed.
, Positive freedom is concerned with the content, with ideals and ways of living for which individuals
and groups strive. The political version of this is democracy: “the possibility for individual, together
with those with whom they from a community, to give direction to their own society”.
In child-upbringing, little attention has been paid to positive freedom. Teaching the basic principles of
democracy (e.g. how to resolve conflicts, how to manage diversity) can be seen as a contribution to the
development of positive freedom.
Liberating the debate on socialization
The polarity between hard and soft is not so much concerned with freedom itself, but almost entirely
with the curtailing of negative freedom, i.e. restrictions.
(Zie samenvatting p.9!)
With this focus on negative freedom, the question of how to give form to positive freedom has been
receded into the background. But it is precisely when the issue is that of child-upbringing and youth
dissatisfaction that this question is crucial: how do we support young people to enable then to develop
as well as possible into the autonomous citizens of a plural, democratic society?
In the current culture there is a neglect of the ideals of children and adolescents themselves in their
upbringing and education and this can lead not only to a deadening of awareness, but also to
radicalization. The deeper the neglect of positive freedom, the more young people will tend to
maximize their negative freedom. But this becomes rather ‘empty freedom’; you want something but
what it looks like scarcely matters. Such an expanded but empty negative freedom could then provoke
the growth of social forces demanding that it be curtailed. Thus the circle is complete.
Argument: We must speak more with children about their identity, the way in which they experience
society and want to change it – in short, about positive freedom. This should arise in education and
especially in their everyday social experience.
Children are now given the message that they are not much valued, that they do not belong. It’s a self-
fulfilling prophecy, for such experience eventually leads to behaviour that evokes a social reaction
demanding tough limits. Raising children for positive freedom is therefore enormously important. It is
a condition for being able to guarantee space of the negative freedom for all citizens in a
democratically constituted state.
Chapter 3 – Child abuse
Nowadays assumptions regarding child abuse:
1. Abuse and neglect are mainly endogenous problems within the family. Individual problems.
2. These problems can be best identified and solved by experts, monitored by the government.
At Risk model – in which dysfunction is mainly seen as the outcome of individual risk factors and
pathologies. Instruments are directed on the psycho-social characteristics of children and parents and
the associated interventions are directed at the micro-level of the child/family.
Cause & effect
Circumstances, such as demographic factors or one-parent families, can eventually lead to abuse.
However, these cannot be seen as the immediate cause of abuse and neglect. After all, there are many
more families who, under the same circumstances, treat their children well.
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