dekker2009.pdf

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

1/21

This article was downloaded by: [Fordham University]On: 02 September 2014, At: 23:40Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Paedagogica Historica: International

Journal of the History of EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors and

subscription information:

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpdh20

Children at risk in history: a storyof

expansionJeroen J.H. Dekker

a

aUniversity of Groningen , The NetherlandsPublished online: 20 Apr 2009.

To cite this article:Jeroen J.H. Dekker (2009) Children at risk in history: a story of expansion,

Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 45:1-2, 17-36, DOI:

10.1080/00309230902746206

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230902746206

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (theContent) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-

and-conditions
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230902746206http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpdh20http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230902746206http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/00309230902746206http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpdh20

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

2/21

Paedagogica Historica

Vol. 45, Nos. 12, FebruaryApril 2009, 1736

ISSN 0030-9230 print/ISSN 1477-674X online

2009 Stichting Paedagogica Historica

DOI: 10.1080/00309230902746206

http://www.informaworld.com

Children at risk in history: a story of expansion

Jeroen J.H. Dekker*

University of Groningen, The NetherlandsTaylorandFrancisLtdCPDH_A_374790.sgm10.1080/00309230902746206Paedagogica Historica0030-9230 (print)/1477-674X (online)Original Article2009Taylor&[email protected]

Looking at children at risk in history, one of the most striking changes over timeis the relative and absolute growth of the number of at-risk children. Although thisis not a linear development, the need for intervention and prevention in the 1970s

being much weaker than before and after that period, the long-term direction ofhistory indeed seems to indicate growth. This is a paradox when looking at thesocial, economic and scientific development of the Western world. Although theambition of diminishing the group of at-risk children continues until today, never

before in history were more children being diagnosed as at risk.

Keywords: children at risk; education; century of the child; child science; riskyfamilies; risky genotypes

Introduction

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of difficult and uncertain times. Circumstances

place some at greater risk than others. This is not the first sentence of an address of

a political leader of a country at war, after a natural disaster, a major terrorist attack

or amidst an economic crisis. It is the first sentence of a foreword from 2004 by theeditors, all of them child psychologists, for a series of seven booklets on how to deal

with children at risk for Emotional or Behavioral Disorders (E/BD). As with most

addresses of political leaders in warlike circumstances, now too, after the announce-ment of the high-risk situation today that suggests better times in the past, light at the

end of the tunnel is provided. The near future will be hard, but at the end there is more

than a glimmer of hope: In light of mounting challenges to serving children and youths

with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD), it is good to know that there are a

growing number of practices that have compelling empirical evidence for their effec-tiveness.1According to Maureen Conroy, editor of one of the booklets: Recently,

we have seen a startling increase in the number of young children who demonstratechallenging behaviors in early childhood settings. Many of these young children are

at risk for later being identified as having E/BD.2Therefore, Conroy asks for action.Although the law requires that an FBA [a so-called Functional Behavioral Assess-

ment, JD] be conducted on children who engage in problem behavior, it may be more

appropriate and proactive for us to broaden our perspective of functional assessment

to meet the needs of all students and promote positive behavior, attempting to prevent

*Email: [email protected]. Bullock, R.A. Gable and K.J. Melloy, Foreword, in Prevention and Early

Intervention for Young Children at Risk for Emotional or Behavioral Disorders, ed. M. A.Conroy (Arlington, VA: Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders, 2004), 12.2Conroy,Prevention and Early Intervention, 1.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

3/21

18 J.J.H. Dekker

and remediate the needs of young children who exhibit or are at risk for behavioral

disorders.3

When looking at children at risk in history, one of the most striking changes over

time is the relative and absolute growth of the number of at-risk children, the growing

attention to their problems and the growing belief in the effectiveness of prevention.

It is true that this is not a linear but a fluctuating development, as can be shown by the

example of the 1970s, when temporarily the belief in the effectiveness of interventionand prevention diminished dramatically. And yet the long-term direction of history

indicates growth: of children at risk, and of risky parents. When looking at the social,

economic and scientific development of the Western world, being the world this arti-

cle is focused on, with a level of prosperity never seen before in history, this growthseems a paradox. From the first, early-nineteenth-century initiatives for the protection

of children at risk aimed at diminishing substantially the number of children at risk,

and this ambition never did disappear during the next century. Yet, during that very

twentieth century, known among pedagogues as the Century of the Child, more chil-

dren were diagnosed as being at risk than ever before.The history of children at risk is a story of expansion. It is a story of the birth

time and again of new categories of children at risk together with new measures and

institutions to tackle these new risks. It is the history of orphans and orphanages, of

children with physical disabilities like deafness and blindness and homes and learn-ing methods developed specifically for them, of criminal children and reform houses,

of deprived children and rescue houses, of nervous children and ambulant psychiat-

ric and psychological centres, of children with personality problems and diagnostic

and therapeutic centres, children at risk of maltreatment and sexual abuse, children

with war traumas, migrant children and their specific risks, children with eating

disorders, so called E/BD children, at risk of emotional or behavioural disorders,attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children, and finally highly talented

children.

In this article, not all these categories will be treated. The focus will be on risksrelated to the behaviour of the child and its family, not to physical and mental disabil-

ities, although that history is fascinating, both scientifically and as evidence of the

emancipation of children and youth with these disabilities, as can be seen in the contri-

bution by Catherine Kudlick elsewhere in this special issue. The reason why I focus

on behavioural and family risks is that these factors seem to play the main role in thestory of expansion of children at risk. This story of expansion is the outcome of one

of several possible histories, not that of a conspiracy. It could also have turned outanother way. Sensitivity with historical contingency is therefore necessary.4 The

contingent historical outcome is the result of both institutions, like the church, thestate and professional organisations, and of individual actors, often joining each other

in networks.5This story is the outcome of the productive networks of the fathers and

mothers of the movement of children at risk, such as Johann-Hinrich Wichern and his

Rauhe Haus near Hamburg, Charles Lucas, Frdric-August Demetz and his agrarian

colony of Mettray near Tours in France, Mary Carpenter and her perishing and

3Conroy,Prevention and Early Intervention, 1112.

4Cf. T. Nijhuis, Structuur en contingentie. Over de grenzen van het sociaalwetenschappelijkverklaringsideaal in de Duitse geschiedschrijving(PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1995).5Cf. special issue on Networks and the History of Education, ed. E. Fuchs, D. Lindmark andCH. Lth,Paedagogica Historica43, no. 2 (2007).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

4/21

Paedagogica Historica 19

dangerous children, and Willem Suringar and his Dutch Mettray. It is also about Ellen

Key and her idea of a Century of the Child, about Child Acts and childrens rights,about child sciences: about their efforts and contributions, sometimes intended, mostly

unintended, to the story of expansion of children at risk.

This article starts with the historical transgression from holy children to children

at risk, in other words the birth of the phenomenon of the children at risk of this story,

and its first institutions, founded for them in nineteenth-century Europe. Then, itfocuses on the expansion in the twentieth century, or the Century of the Child: that is

a story of new risks, more risks, more risky risks, and on three levels: risky families

and risky parents, risky children, and finally risky genotypes. It will be stated that two

worldwide phenomena, namely Child Science and Child Acts and Childrens Rights,although both explicitly intended to work in the interest of the child, also have func-

tioned as major multipliers for the expansion of children at risk.

From holy children to children at riskHoly children and the proclamation of the Century of the Child

Romantic poets like William Blake (17571827) and William Wordsworth (1770

1850) expressed the idea of the holy child, while at the same time, as is clear fromBlakes poem The Chimney Sweeper, having an open eye for the contrasting real-

ities of childhood in industrialising England. Wordsworth, in his Ode on Intima-

tions of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood, put the child on the

throne of innocence, considering childhood as the best part of life, and the childitself as a human being not far from God.6 Most radical was Jean-Jacques

Rousseaus (17121778) image of childhood, a very child-oriented view, developed

in his Emileof 1762. He asserted the right of a child to be a child and to be happyas an innocent being, to be brought up in a natural way, preferably by his or her

mother. German romantic writers like Johann Gottfried Herder (17441803),Johann Wolfgang Goethe (17491832), Johann Christoph Friedrich Von Schiller

(17591805), Friedrich Schleiermacher (17681834), and the pedagogue Friedrich

Wilhelm August Frbel (17821852) joined in this looking at children as almost

holy persons.7

This romantic image of childhood became the love baby of the majority of peda-

gogues through the genial act of the Swedish pedagogue, feminist and socialist Ellen

Key (18491926). In 1900, she proclaimed the Century of the Child in the interests of

the child in her book entitled The Century of the Child, which became one of the fewpedagogical bestsellers, in that respect comparable only to Emileby Rousseau and

Dr Spocks book of child-rearing advice. In emphasising the best interest of the child

and the importance of educators, Keys book remained popular today amongst peda-

gogues and social workers. Although she worked very eclectically, making use of

6M.S. Baader, Die romantische Idee des Kindes und der Kindheit. Auf der Suche nach derverloren Unschuld (Neuwied, Kriftel and Berlin: Luchterhand Baader, 1996); H.Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500(London and New York:Longman, 1995), 7374.7Hwang, C. Philip, M.E. Lamb, I.E. Sigel (eds.).Images of Childhood. Mahwah (New Jersey:

Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996); Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 6578; Andresen, S. andM.S. Baader. Wege aus dem Jahrhundert des Kindes. Tradition und Utopie bei Ellen Key .

Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1998, 91; Rosenblum, R. The Romantic Child from Runge to Sendak.(London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

5/21

20 J.J.H. Dekker

such different sources as Spinozas pantheism, Darwins evolutionism and Galtungs

eugenics, Montaignes ideas on savoir-vivre, and Nietzsches neue Mensch, sheborrowed her basic ideas on childhood and education, namely about the natural

development of the child and the central position of the mother in child rearing,

directly from Rousseaus Emile. It was that influence that caused her to write the

following sentence in her book on the Century of the Child: The age of the holiness

of the child will arrive.8

Next to this romantic image of childhood, the concept earlier developed of the

child as a tabula rasa remained important, in particular in the world of school

reforms.9This concept originated in Humanistic and Reformation Europe, as can be

seen in texts by Desiderius Erasmus and Jacob Cats, and made famous by JohnLocke in his Some Thoughts Concerning Educationof 1693. According to the popu-

lar version of his concept, the child was not an innocent being, as was argued by

Rousseau, but an empty one, to be filled by the educators. However, according to

another image of childhood, founded on the idea of Original Sin, the child started

not as an empty person, but, on the contrary, as one full of original sin. That thirdimage of childhood was behind many activities of rescuing children at risk under-

taken by adherents of the Rveil movement and by Evangelicals, such as for exam-

ple the Dutch Otto Gerhard Heldring, the German Johan-Hinrich Wichern, and the

British Lord Shaftesbury. Thus, the burden of Original Sin stimulated educationalactivism.10

Approaching holiness: radical intervention methods for children at risk

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the marginal position of children

became a subject of special reconsideration by the newly formed and influential group

8R. Drbing, Der Traum vom Jahrhundert des Kindes. Geistige Grundlagen, sozialeImplikationen und reformpdagogische relevanz der erziehungslehre Ellen Keys (Frankfurtam Main, Bern, New York and /Paris: Peter Lang, 1990), 42220; Andresen and Baader,Wege aus dem Jahrhundert des Kindes, 737; W.A. t Hart, Ellen Key 1948 (PhD Thesis,University of Leiden, 1949), 2223; E. Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes(Berlin: S. Fischer,1903 [orig. 1900]), 42; E. Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes (Berlin: S. Fischer1903 [orig.1900])., cf. J.J.H. Dekker, Demystification in the Century of the Child: The Conflict betweenRomanticism and Disenchantment in (Residential) Youth Care from the 1830s to 2000, in

Professionalization and Participation in Child and Youth Care. Challenging understandingsin theory and practice, ed. E.J. Knorth, P.M. van den Bergh and F. Verhey (Burlington:

Ashgate, 2002), 2748; J.J.H. Dekker, The Century of the Child Revisited. InternationalJournal of Childrens Rights8 (2000), 133150.9Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 6263; Jeroen J.H. Dekker, Moral literacy: the

pleasure of learning how to become decent adults and good parents in the Dutch Republic inthe seventeenth century. Paedagogica Historica 44 (2008), 137151; Jeroen J.H. Dekker,

Het verlangen naar opvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sindsde Gouden Eeuw tot omstreeks 1900(Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006), 4350.10J. Innes, Church and Voluntarism, in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform. From the 1690sto 1850, ed. H. Cunningham and I. Innes (New York: St Martins Press, 1998), 32; H.Hendrick, Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem, 18801920 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1990), 2122, 24; B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of

Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 17851865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991

[orig. 1988]), 8; J.J.H. Dekker, L.F. Groenendijk and J. Verberckmoes, Proudly raisingvulnerable youngsters. The scope for education in the Netherlands, in Pride and Joy.Childrens portraits in the Netherlands 15001700, ed. J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart(Ghent, Amsterdam and New York: Ludion and Abrams, 2000), 4360.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

6/21


of philanthropists.11The child at risk was born. Various methods of intervention were

proposed and introduced, including improvement of schooling and family patronagesystems, these methods keeping the children at home. However, risks had gone too far

for the criminal and seriously deprived children, for whom a future of vagrancy or

adult criminality seemed unavoidable. For these children, a radical solution was neces-

sary in the opinion of the majority of European philanthropists, among them Charles

Lucas and Frdric-Auguste Demetz from France, Edouard Ducptiaux from Belgium,Mary Carpenter, Matthew Davenport Hill and the Revd Sydney Parker from England,

Willem Suringar from the Netherlands, and Johann-Hinrich Wichern from Germany.

Only when taking the children out of the dangerous big towns into the isolated and

healthy country, into residential homes, a healing process was possible. As a result, inthe 1830s residential care for criminal and at-risk children was born with the founda-

tion of famous homes like the Rauhe Haus near Hamburg in Germany in 1833, the

Dutch Boys prison in Rotterdam (1833), the French Mettray (1839), Red Hill (1849)

in England, and in 1851 Ruysselede in Belgium and Mettray in the Netherlands.

The practice of re-educating these children at risk showed that they were farremoved from the holiness that was expected of children according to the romantic idea

of childhood. Homes for children at risk like the German Rauhe Haus, the French

Mettray, the Dutch Mettray, and many others turned out to be ambiguous institutions:

on the one hand disciplinary, according to Foucault even carceral institutions, on theother pedagogical wonder mechanisms, built on romantic ideas of childhood and educa-

tion, or sometimes also moral institutions, like the Rauhe Haus, one of the very first.

The Rauhe Haus was founded in 1833 by Johann Hinrich Wichern (18081881),

herald of the internal mission, a nineteenth-century Lutheran version of Christian

charity. Wicherns Rauhe Haus was a rescue home for children at risk.12That these

children were indeed children at risk is made clear by the description from HoraceMann (17961859), Secretary of the State Board of Education of Massachusetts in

18371848, who made a philanthropic pilgrimage in Europe in 1843: Nearly all of

them had been left and trained to beggary, lying, stealing and to every vicious habit.They had slept under carts, in doorways, herding with swine and cattle by night, when

the begging or thieving hours were past.13 These children were perishing and

11J.J.H. Dekker, The Will to Change the Child: Re-education Homes for Children at Risk inNineteenth Century Western Europe(Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York,Oxford and Wien: Peter Lang, 2001); A. Farge, La vie fragile. Violence, pouvoirs et

solidarits Paris au XVIIIe sicle (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 321; A. Farge, Marginaux. In

Dictionnaire des Sciences Historiques, ed. A. Burguire (Paris: Presses Universitaires deFrance, 1986), 436438; C. Bec, C. Duprat, J.-N. Luc and, J.-P. Petit, eds, Philanthropies et

politiques sociales en Europe (XVIIIeXXesicles)(Paris: Anthropos, 1994).12In 1849, he wrote the bible of the German internal mission: J.H. Wichern, Die innere

Mission der deutschen evangelischen Kirche. Eine Denkschrift an die deutsche Nation(Hamburg, 1889 [orig. 1849]); B. Lindmeier, Die Pdagogik des Rauhen Hauses. Zu den

Anfngen der Erziehung schwieriger Kinder bei Johann Hinrich Wichern (Bad Heilbronn:Julius Klinkhardt, 1998), 5960, 78, 82100; M. Carpenter, Reformatory Schools for theChildren of Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders (London: Gilpin,1851), 335; the name Rauhe Haus already existed and possibly means red house in broadGerman, Lindmeier, Die Pdagogik, 443444. Cf. H. Lilje, Johann Hinrich Wichern 18081881, in Die grossen Deutschen. Deutsche Biographie, Vol. 3, ed. H. Heimpel, Th. Heuss

and B. Reifenberg (Berlin, 1956), 376388.13Carpenter,Reformatory Schools, 335336, based on a report of Manns visit. On Mann: A.Johnson, and D. Malone, eds,Dictionary of American Biography(New York, 1937), Vol. XII,240242.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

7/21

22 J.J.H. Dekker

dangerous, in the famous words of Mary Carpenter; indeed, they were at risk. The

Rauhe Haus soon became an icon of residential education and a major destination forphilanthropic pilgrimages like that by Horace Mann. Visitors wrote enthusiastic

reports, which made the Rauhe Haus even more famous.14In 1880, the American E.C.

Wines was just as enthusiastic as Horace Mann, Demetz, Suringar and Carpenter had

been in the early years, and wrote that the Rauhe Haus has a world-wide reputa-

tion.15

The ultimate paradox of Romantic discipline can be found in the agrarian colony

of Mettray near Tours in France. Founded in 1839 by Frdric-Auguste Demetz

(17961873), a French judge, supported by members of the French elite, amongst

them Gasparin, Beaumont, Brenger, Cochin, Falloux, Guizot, Moreau-Christophe,Rothschild and De Tocqueville, Mettray was not, like the Rauhe Haus, intended for

deprived children to be rescued, but for criminal, or, in the terminology of Mary

Carpenter, dangerous children to be disciplined and re-educated. Although the very

word discipline is missing from the statutes,16the colony was, nevertheless, accord-

ing to Michel Foucault, who made Mettray famous in his classic Surveiller et punirof1975, the disciplinary form at its most extreme, the model in which are concentrated

all the coercive technologies of behaviour.17For Foucault, Mettray constitutes the

example par excellence of the carceral institutions for children whose possible holi-

ness seems to be disenchanted forever. However, contemporaries, visiting the colonyin great number as part of their philanthropic journey (a phenomenon that became

popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) saw at Mettray some-

thing very different from Foucaults view.18According to them, Mettray as well as

similar institutions belonged to the civilisedworld in the words of Wines, a world

that cares about its children at risk.19According to the contemporary testimonies of

14H. Gaillac, Les maisons de correction 18301945 (Paris, 1994 [orig. 1971]), 78;E.C. Wines, The State of Prisons and of Child-Saving Institutions in the Civilised World(Cambridge, 1880), 341; Carpenter, Reformatory Schools, 335338. According to D. Owen,

English Philanthropy, 16601960(Cambridge, MA: Belknapp Press, 1964), 153, the impacton Great Britain of the French home of Mettray was more important.15Wines, The State, 75. The Enlightened philanthropic Dutch society the Nutconsidered thecottage system as applied in Hamburg to be the counterpart of Red Hill and Mettray. Th.

Nolen, ed.,Het Vraagstuk van de verzorging der verwaarloosde kinderen in opdracht van deMaatschappij tot Nut van t Algemeen, bewerkt door mr. J.A. Levy, P.H. Hugenholz jr., Jhr.mr. A.J. Rethaan Macar(Amsterdam, 1898), 193.16Rapport Annueladress MM les membres de la Socit Paternelle, Colonie agricole et

pnitentiaire de Mettray, douzime annee, Tours 1854.17M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison(Paris, 1975, 300301 [translated as

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Middlesex/New York/Victoria, 1977, 293296]); on Mettray and other French agrarian colonies, see: Luc Forlevisi, Georges-FranoisPottier and Sophie Chassat, eds, Eduquer et Punir. La colonie agricole et pnitentiaire de

Mettray (18391937)(Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 225238; J.-G. Petit,Ces peines obscures. La prison pnale en France 17801875(Paris: Fayard, 1990); C. Carlier,

La prison aux champs. Les colonies denfants dlinquants du nord de la France au XIXe sicle(Paris: Les Editions de lAtelier, 1994); Gaillac, Les maisons de correction; M. Perrot,

LImpossible prison. Recherches sur le systme pnitentiaire au XIXe sicle/runies parMichelle Perrot; dbat avec Michel Foucault(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980).18J.J.H. Dekker, Transforming the Nation and the Child: Philanthropy in the Netherlands,

Belgium, France and England, c.1780c.1850, in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform. Fromthe 1690s to 1850, H. Cunningham and J. Innes (Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York:St Martins Press, 1998), 130147, 137.19Wines, The State.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

8/21


many visitors, Mettray was a home for the re-education of criminal children who were

regarded as children instead of criminals. Among those visitors were the Dutchphilanthropist Willem Hendrik Suringar (17901872), who after his visit to Mettray

in 1845 decided to found a similar institution in his own country that started in 1851

as the Nederlandsch Mettray,20the British Revd Sydney Turner, who emphasised the

element of love21, and the British reformer of criminal law Matthew Davenport Hill

(17921872), who wrote: No Mahommedan believes more devoutly in the effi-cacy of a pilgrimage to Mecca, than I do in one to Mettray.22Therefore, holiness

remained glimmering on the horizon of these children, and approaching somehow a

level of holiness remained part of the ambition.23Foucaults pairing of Surveiller et

punir should be extended to both educate and love if we take seriously the storypresented in contemporary testimonies.24

Mettray was one of the many examples of re-educational homes that emerged in

Europe. All these institutions, increased into a archipelago of several thousands of

homes at the end of the nineteenth century, shared, notwithstanding the many differ-

ences in approach and underlying ideology from Enlightenment to orthodox Protes-tantism, one and the same conviction: that the problem of children at risk, or, in the

words of Mary Carpenter, the perishing and dangerous children, was a huge problem,

to be attacked frontally, but with as the expected result a dramatic diminution of the

number of those children. These pioneers shared a deep belief in the effectiveness oftheir exertions, which they estimated at about 80%. This idea of diminution, however,

changed in the course of the twentieth century, with a temporal regressive develop-

ment in the 1970s, and a remarkable acceleration in the last decades, resulting in more

risks, new risks and more risky risks.

New risks, more risky risks: risky families and parents, risky children,

risky genotypes

The expansion of at-risk children in the last decades was due to three categories of

risks: risky families and parents, behavioural and developmental risks of children, andfinally risky genotypes.

Risky families: an era of family upheaval in the USA

In 1997, an alarming book, entitledA Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of

Family Upheaval, was published by the American sociologists Paul Amato and Alan

20W. Suringar,My Visit to Mettray(Leeuwarden: G.T.N. Suringar, n.d. [1847]), 1112, 14, 23.On Suringar, see Dekker, The Will to Change the Child, 141143; Ch. Leonards,De ontdekkingvan het onschuldige criminele kind. Bestraffing en opvoeding van criminele kinderen in

jeugdgevangenis en opvoedingsgesticht 18331886(Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 7374.21Cited in Carpenter,Reformatory Schools, 325327.22Cited in Owen, English Philanthropy,153. On Hill, see L. Stephen and S. Lee, eds, The

Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1917), Vol. IX, 853855.23Other testimonies can be found in Wines, The State of Prisons. Edouard Ducptiaux (18041868), the famous Belgian prison reformer, also visited Mettray, see MS. Dupont-Bouchat,

De la prison lcole. Les pnitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIXesicle (18401914)

(Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1996), 4344. Cf. Dekker, Straffen, redden en opvoeden, 204206.24See on Foucault and Aris: J.J.H. Dekker and D.M. Lechner, Discipline and Pedagogics inHistory. Foucault, Aris, and the History of Panoptical Education.European Legacy4, no. 5(1999): 3749.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

9/21

24 J.J.H. Dekker

Booth.25This book was based on their longitudinal life-course Study of Marital Insta-

bility, which started in 1980 with interviews of c.2000 people, who were interviewedagain in 1983, 1988 and 1992. Their conclusion is that growing up in an American

family has become highly risky. One reviewer recommended the book without reser-

vation to all professionals interested in the ongoing drama[emphasis added, JD] of

the family.26According to Amato and Booth, parental marital quality is the key

variable for the well-being of their offspring, this variable being much more impor-tant than other variables like the increase in the educational levels of parents and a

smaller number of children, which generally benefit children, or a declining standard

of living and consequently financial stress for many parents in the 1980s and 1990s,

which has negative effects on children, in particular in the short term. According toAmato and Booth, the protecting and positive effects of modern society, like the vari-

ables mentioned higher educational levels of parents and a smaller family size are

far from compensating for the negative effects of the declining parental marital quality

during the last three decades. According to them, if marital quality is declining, and

they are convinced of that development, the balance for offspring making the transi-tion to adulthood has tilted in a negative direction. If marital quality should not

become better soon, the outlook for future generations of youth may be even more

pessimistic. In particular, young children are vulnerable to the effects of declining

marital quality. Therefore, they recommend a family policy that prevents low-conflictmarriages from ending in divorce, and that should be based on creating incentives for

parents to act in the best interests of their children.27

Amato and Booths thesis about a whole generation growing up in an Era of Family

Upheaval, with its children making the transition to adulthood in a risky parenting

environment becoming children at risk, contributes to the story of expansion.28

Risky families: the history of the battered child

One of the most studied aspects of risky families in recent decades, namely maltreat-

ment of children, is not unknown in the history of childhood and education. Accordingto scholars such as Loyd Demause, basing their analysis on a linear development of

the history of education and childhood, and of the opinion that coming from a dark

age we are arriving into a white one nowadays, maltreatment of children was normal

daily practice until recently. The debate on this from-black-to-white interpretation ofthe history of childhood has developed in the conviction that the history of education

25P.R. Amato and A. Booth, A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of FamilyUpheaval(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).26F.F. Eddins-Folensbee, A Generation at Risk [Book Review], Journal of the American

Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry41, no. 4 (April 200): 486487.27Amato and Booth,A Generation at Risk, 215, 221 (quotation), 223, 239.28For England, in 2001, Peter Sidebotham et al. tried to identify and validate parental riskfactors for child maltreatment through the famous Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents andChildren, ALSPAC. Main parental risk factors were age (mothers of abused children often

being younger than mothers of non-abused children), educational achievement, and long-termpsychiatric illness, but not a history of abuse in childhood, as has been argued by otherauthors, P. Sidebotham and J. Golding. Child maltreatment in the Children of the Nineties.

A longitudinal study of parental risk factors, Child Abuse and Neglect 25 (2001): 11771200: 11771178, 1189, 11961197. A total of 162 out of their sample of 14,1348

participating in 1991 and 1992 in British Avon born children has been identified as havingbeen maltreated.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

10/21


and childhood should not be looked at as a linear development, among other things

because of the many examples of good parenting in early modern Europe.29For therest, the fact that maltreatment of children is part of a long history of educational prac-

tices does not mean that it was always recognised as a major pedagogical problem. On

the contrary, this only happened rather recently. Considering maltreatment of children

as a pedagogical problem received an enormous stimulus in 1962 with the publication

of the famous article on theBattered Child Syndromeby the American medical doctorKempe.30As a matter of fact, however, growing attention to the maltreatment of chil-

dren does not automatically mean that its prevalence also grows. A more convincing

hypothesis seems to be that maltreatment of children has diminished during the last

50 years in the Western world, mainly through two developments. First, the pedagog-ical and legal requirements of not battering your child have become more compelling

and explicit than ever before in history. As a consequence, nowadays parents know

that they are acting as much against generally accepted pedagogical standards as

against national and international laws when battering their child. Second, economic

growth and the emergence of the welfare state has made it easier for parents to educatetheir children and care for them instead of neglecting and battering them.

This hypothesis of diminution of the maltreatment of children in the Western

world is dependent on the assumption that the criteria for maltreatment of children

remained more or less the same. But they did not. They became broader. This makesit almost impossible to evaluate historically, in a longitudinal meta-study, the preva-

lence of childrens maltreatment.31After the publication of Kempes article in 1962,

numerous articles in an increasing number of academic journals were published on

abused and neglected children, while at the same time an impressive institutional

framework of diagnosis and prevention was set up.32In addition, from the end of the

1980s, new international juridical standards came into existence and could be used tojustify the expanding criteria for child abuse and neglect. According to Stuart Hart in

2007, International standards now exist that establish a universal imperative for

protecting children from child abuse and neglect. The UN Convention (treaty) on theRights of the Child is the pre-eminent international philosophical and legal base in

29In some countries, like the Netherlands, only from the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

On the black-to-white debate, see Dekker,Het verlangen naar opvoeden, 2006, 2123.30C.H. Kempe, FN. Silverman, B.F. Steele, W. Droegemuller and H.K. Silver, The Battered-Child Syndrome,Journal of the American Medical Association181 (1962): 105112. Cf. thehistorical overview by H.E.M. Baartman, Opvoeden kan zeer doen. Over oorzaken vankindermishandeling, hulpverlening en preventie(Utrecht: SWP, 1996).31The most recent overviews on child maltreatment in the Netherlands are M.H. vanIJzendoorn et al., Kindermishandeling. Leiden Attachment Research Program (The Hague:Ministerie van Justitie [Ministry of Justice / WODC, 2007); and F. Lamers-Winkelman, N.W.Slot, B. Bijl and A.C. Vijlbrief, Scholieren Over Mishandeling. Resultaten van een landelijkonderzoek naar de omvang van kindermishandeling onder leerlingen van het voortgezetonderwijs(The Hague: Ministerie van Justitie [Ministry of Justice / WODC, 2007). See alsoH. Baartman, R. Bullens and J. Willems (eds.). Kindermishandeling: de politiek een zorg

(Amsterdam: SWP, 2005).32For the institutional practice in the Netherlands from 1972 until the 90s, see M.A.S.Roelofs, Kindermishandeling en hulpverlening. De aanpak van lichamelijkekindermishandeling door het Bureau Vertrouwensarts(Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1996).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

11/21

26 J.J.H. Dekker

regard to childrens human rights.33Indeed, article 19 from that Convention, ratified

by almost all UN member states, states the following:

(1) States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educa-tional measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury

or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexualabuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has thecare of the child. (2) Such protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective

procedures for the establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support forthe child and for those who have the care of the child, as well as for other forms of

prevention and for identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment described heretofore, and, as appropriate, for judi-cial involvement.

As a consequence, a new level of heightened awareness and commitment to child

protection has been established.34

Because of the increasing gap between the intentions, laid down in the UN

Convention, and the tough reality of the protection of children at risk, Hart asks for

support for the State to assume its higher than usual legitimate rights and responsi-

bilities to intervene intrude in the lives of families and children. His recommen-

dations are put forward in semi-military terminology: The unlikelihood of first-strikeintervention precision and accuracy argues for the application of intervention models

that incorporate the qualities of the highly successful Multisystemic Therapy (MST)

orientation to working with children at risk, their families and communities.35 In

sum, more power for the state and for the professionals is recommended and justifiedby the international childrens rights, these very rights functioning both as a protection

machine and as a multiplier for the number of children at risk.

David Finkelhor from the University of New Hampshire, one of the most famousexperts on the subject, published his first comprehensive studies in 1979. During hislong academic career, the prevalence of child abuse and neglect grew almost continu-

ously according to his publications.36In a representative sample of American children

and youth in the age group 2 to 17 years, Finkelhor and his team found that:

More than one half of the children and youth had experimented a physical assault inthe study year, more than 1 in 4 a property offence, more than 1 in 8 a form of

33S.N. Hart, Reflections on the implications of re-victimization patterns of children and

youth as clarified by the research of Finkelhor, Ormrod and Turner, Child Abuse and Neglect31 (2007): 473477, 473.34Quoted by Hart, Reflections, 473474.35Hart, Reflections, 475476.36D. Finkelhor, Sexually Victimized Children (New York: Free Press), 1979. Idem: ChildSexual Abuse: New Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1984). In 1994, hesupported the statement of Loyd DeMause that while anthropologists have in the pasttheorized about the so-called universality of the incest taboo, suggesting the rarity of actualincest, the real cultural universal has been the presence of widespread incest and childmolestation [and now he quotes L. Demause, The universality of incest, Journal of

Psychohistory19, no. 2 (1991): 123164] in most places at most times, with rates from 7%to 36% for women and 3% to 29% for men; D. Finkelhor, The International Epidemiology of

Child Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse and Neglect18, no. 5 (1994): 409417, 413. Cf. on thissubject, with approximately the same figures for women, N. Draijer, Seksuele traumatiseringin de jeugd. Lange termijn gevolgen van seksueel misbruik van meisjes door verwanten(Amsterdam: Sua, 1990).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

12/21


child maltreatment, 1 in 12 a sexual victimization, and more than 1 in 3 had beena witness to violence or experienced another form of indirect victimization. Only aminority (20 %) had no direct or indirect victimization.37

An appendix in which victimisation is defined as a complex of several dozen activi-

ties, including the categories of (1) Physical assaults, bullying, and teasing, (2) SexualVictimisation, (3) Child Maltreatment, (4) Property Victimisations, and (5) Witnessedand Indirect Victimisations, makes clear that the way Finkelhor and his team are

defining victimisation is of influence on the alarming percentages of victimisation

among American children and youth.38

Finkelhor is not the exception on the rule. On the contrary, many recent publica-

tions from academic journals such as Pediatrics, Child Maltreatment, the EuropeanJournal of Criminology, Child Abuse & Neglect, Child Developmentand Sciencetell

a story of expansion of child maltreatment.39In an article from 2007 inPediatricson

Child Maltreatment in the United States, based on the National Longitudinal Study of

Adolescent Health, a cohort study that uses the method of self-report, Hussey et al.conclude that self-reported childhood maltreatment was common, while each type

of maltreatment was associated with multiple adolescent health risks. Although

recognising that [d]espite > 40 years of sustained research on child abuse and neglect,

we are still struggling to answer these basic questions, according to them, childhood

maltreatment is prevalent, and its adverse consequences are many. Conservative esti-mates place the number of US children victimised by maltreatment each year at close

to 1 million and the annual number of child deaths caused by abuse or neglect at nearly

1500.40This conclusion confirms both the generation at risk thesis by Amato and

Booth and the figures by Finkelhor.The United States is not special in having such a high prevalence of child maltreat-

ment, as is made clear by comparative research. E. Douglas and Murray Straus studied

37D. Finkelhor, R. Ormrod, H. Turner and S.L. Hamby, The Victimization of Children andYouth: A Comprehensive, National Survey. Child Maltreatment10, no. 1 (2005): 525, 5.38On the phenomenon of poly-victimization, cf. D. Finkelhor, R.K. Ormrod, H.A. Turner andS.L. Hamby, Measuring poly-victimization using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire,Child Abuse and Neglect29 (2005): 12971312, based on the same research questionnaireand the same victimization definitions. It states that twenty-two percent of the children inthis sample had experienced four or more different kinds of victimizations in separateincidents (what we term poly-victimization) within the previous year. Such poly-victimizationwas highly associated with traumatic symptomatology, 1297.39See for example K.J. Sternberg, M. E. Lamb, E. Guterman and C. B. Abbott, Effects ofearly and later family violence on childrens behavior problems and depression: Alongitudinal, multi-informant perspective, Child Abuse and Neglect 30 (2006): 283306;H. Sariola and A. Uutela. The prevalence and context of family violence against children inFinland, Child Abuse and Neglect 16 (1992): 823832; C. May-Chahal and P. Cawson.Measuring child maltreatment in the United Kingdom: A study of the prevalence of childabuse and neglect, Child Abuse and Neglect29 (2005): 969984, who conclude that despitethe existence of a developed child protection system over the last two decades in the UK,child maltreatment prevalence remains unacceptable high. There is a need for a moreinformed public debate about acceptable standards for the treatment of children.40J.M. Hussey, J.J. Chang and J.B. Kotch, Child Maltreatment in the United States:Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Adolescent Health Consequences, Pediatrics. Official Journal

of the American Academy of Pediatrics118, no. 3 (2006): 933942, 933, 934, 940. [H]avingbeen left home alone as a child, indicating possible supervision neglect, was most prevalent(reported by 41.5% of respondents), followed by physical assault (28.4%), physical neglect(11.8%), and contact sexual abuse (4.5%).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

13/21

28 J.J.H. Dekker

corporal punishment experienced as a child by university students in 19 countries.

They concluded that over half of the students did not strongly disagree that theywere spanked or hit a lot by their parents as child (under age 12). Major differences

occurred among the 19 countries studied. While in Washington, DC in the USA 72.6%

of the students did not strongly disagree with that statement, in Amsterdam in Holland

only 19.7% did not strongly disagree. The arcadia for children seems to be just over

the Dutch frontier: in Belgium, or precisely, in Flanders, only 12.9% did not stronglydisagree. This does not mean that, according to these authors, the Europeans should

be content: in German Freiburg, the percentage was 61.5, in English Leicester 53.7.

Even within one single country, major differences were found. So, while in Canadian

Winnipeg, the percentage was 66.5, thus almost the same as in Washington, in Mont-real, also in Canada, a percentage of 27.3 was found. Therefore, the USA is not special

in this respect.

Although the authors recognise these large differences between the 36 university

sites in the prevalence of CP, they nevertheless conclude, emphasising that the

median rate (56) was high, that these findings point to an important public healthand crime problem among youth from relatively privileged segments of the nineteen

countries in this study. They recommend increased efforts to end all use of CP by

parents, consisting of a change in parent education efforts in the form of unequivo-

cal advice to never smack, analogous to the unequivocal advice to never smoke.41

Similar research by Straus on neglectful behaviour by parents in the life history of

university students in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia and

New Zealand shows the same variety in prevalence of the experience of neglectful

behaviour, although on a lower level, ranging from 3.2% to 36% (median 12%). In

this study, the lowest level was found in New Hampshire, USA, with 3.2% of three or

more neglectful behaviours, with Korea-Pusan on the top with 36.4%. Flanders is nolonger the childs arcadia, being now in the middle of the distribution at 11.5%, with

the Netherlands a little bit better at 10.3%. Neglectful behaviour in this study varies

from parents not helping with homework, not comforting when the child was upset,not helping when the child had problems, not making sure whether the child went to

school, not helping the child to do its best, not giving the child enough clothes to keep

it warm, not keeping the child clean, to not caring if the child got into trouble in

school. According to this study, the most frequent neglectful behavior was not help-

ing with homework, reported by 29% of the students, although the percentage ofparents in the 33 sites who did not help with homework ranged from 10% to 73%.

Their conclusions are alarming: This study found that half of the students experi-enced at least one of the eight neglectful behaviors as children, and about 12% expe-

rienced a pervasive pattern of neglect as indicated by three or more of the eightneglectful behaviors measured. Although the rates of students who experienced

three or more neglectful behaviors as a criterion ranged from a low of 3% to a high

of 36%, they conclude: Even the figure of 3% for the university with the lowest rate

is high. The results show high rates of neglectful behavior in both developed and

underdeveloped countries and among a privileged sector of those countries. Because

41E.M, Douglas and M.A. Straus. Assault and Injury of Dating Partners by UniversityStudents in 19 Countries and its Relation to Corporal Punishment Experienced as a Child,

European Journal of Criminology3, no. 3 (2006): 293318, 293, 302, 303 (Table 3: Corporalpunishment experienced before age 12 (n= 36 university sites), 311, 314.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

14/21


of this, they suggest, helping parents avoid neglectful behavior could make a further

contribution to the primary prevention of all types of family violence.42

Until recently, the prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands has been

guessed at using US figures. Extrapolation for the Dutch situation resulted in a number

from c.40,000 to 80,000 children being maltreated each year, depending on the defi-

nition used. Since 2007, new research, done at the request of the Dutch Government,

resulted in much higher figures, varying from 107,200 according to a report by LeidenUniversity to 160,700 children according to a report by the Free University of Amster-

dam. The difference between these figures can be explained by the method used. The

report by the Free University made use of self-report by children aged 1118 years,

roughly in the same way as Straus studied the American situation. Also specific to themethod used by the Free University was the combination of questions on child

maltreatment with more general questions on the situation of the children. The ques-

tionnaire the children were asked to fill in was not offered as a questionnaire on child

maltreatment, but on Nuisance Making and Unpleasant Events (Vragenlijst Verve-

lende en Nare Gebeurtenissen, VVNG), so that the participating children were notconscious of contributing to a study on child maltreatment. The report by Leiden

University interviewed professionals working at schools and child protection institu-

tions. As had already been made clear by Straus, the method of self-report normally

results in higher figures.Both reports made use of rather broad definitions of maltreatment of children. So,

the definition of the Leiden report includes, apart from aspects of child maltreatment

such as sexual abuse and physical violence, also refusal by parents to obey the advice

of professionals, for example not supporting the treatment of a child by a professional,

or refusing to send the child to a day care institution when advised to by the profes-

sionals in the interests of the child. The higher figures are the result both of the use ofthe method of self-report and of the addition to the definition of maltreatment of

witnessing violence at home, in particular between parents, contributing to an unsafe

situation for the child.43

42M.A. Straus and S.A. Savage, Neglectful Behavior by Parents in the Life History ofUniversity Students in 17 Countries and Its Relation to Violence Against Dating Partners,Child Maltreatment10, no. 2 (2005): 124135, 124, 129, 130, 131133, 134; table 2, on thefigures, and table 3, on the definitions. For an earlier study about university students, seeA.M. Berger, J.F. Knutson, J.G. Mehm and K.A. Perkins, The Self-report of PunitiveChildhood Experiences of Young Adults and Adolescents, Child Abuse and Neglect 12

(1988): 251262, 259 and 260, on their university student sample from the Department ofPsychology at the University of Iowa. Although they conclude on the basis of their researchthat the endorsement rate from this sample yields a prevalence estimate of physical abuseclose to 9%, they cannot believe that such a relatively low percentage can be true. BecauseGil [the authors refer to the classic study of D.G. Gil, Violence Against Children (HarvardUniversity Press: Cambridge, 1970), JD] noted that approximately one-third of the abuseoccurs in children less than 3 years old, and because young adults typically do not accuratelyrecall events prior to the age of three, this prevalence estimate would clearly be conservative.In addition, they state: The present study also indicates the importance of assessing discretedisciplinary events rather than asking whether persons had been abused. Most of the personsin the present study who met the more stringent abuse criterion failed to describe themselvesas having been abused. Even the adjudicated adolescents were unlikely to indicate they were

abused.43The Leiden University report, I. Jzendoorn et al. Kindermishandeling, appendix 2 on thedefinition of maltreatment; the Free University of Amsterdam report, Lamers-Winkelmanet al., Scholieren Over Mishandeling, 2.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

15/21

30 J.J.H. Dekker

Thus, the contemporary history of the battered child seems to refute the earlier

proposed hypothesis of diminution of this phenomenon. Professionals are contributingsignificantly to this process of expansion in using research methods resulting in higher

figures, and broadening the definition of child maltreatment.

Risky children

Apart from having risky parents and families, children themselves are becomingincreasingly and in ever-growing numbers risky, according to numerous articles

published on risk analysis in the last decade. According to Ron Nelson et al. in an article

published in 2007 inExceptional Children, the study of risk factors is part of a relatively

new discipline of developmental psychopathology and is based on the belief thatsignificant exposure to key risk factors is associated with negative, long-term life

outcomes. The child with a difficult temperament, that weakness being the most impor-

tant risk factor, is characterised by impulsiveness, distractibility, inflexibility, and

attention deficit problems. These weaknesses resemble the child deficiencies asdefined in a long tradition of systematising child deficiencies before the birth of childsciences by moralists and pedagogues such as Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (17441811)

in hisKrebstbuchlein oder Anweisung zu einer unvernnftiger Erziehung der Kinder

from 1780, Friedrich Heinrich Christian Schwarz (17661837) and Friedrich Eduard

Beneke (17981854) in Germany, and Jan Geluk (18351919) from the Netherlands.At the end of the nineteenth century, several child sciences were built on this system-

atisation of child deficiencies, amongst them the so-called pedagogical pathology,

developed by Ludwig Von Strmpell (18121899) in his Pdagogische Pathologie

from 1890 and by the Dutch Jan Klootsema, and other versions of child science as devel-

oped in France by J. Philippe, G. Paul-Boncour, Alice Descoeudres, and of course AlfredBinet and Thodore Simon, in Great Britain by Sully, Baldwin, Thomas Cloustan, to

mention only some of them, and last but least in the United States by Granville Stanley

Hall (18441924) as the undisputed intellectual leader of child science worldwide.44

While the traditional genre of child deficiencies was part of a moral discourse onhow children and parents ought to behave, the emerging child science around 1900

was primarily interested in is questions, leaving out ought questions on good child

behaviour and good parenting styles. In the past few decades, however, the moral

dimension of child science has become more explicit. The recent emphasis on thestudy of risk factors is part of this development, noted in 1996 by Celia Fischer and

others psychologists when sketching, in an article in Child Development, the changingposition of developmental scientists from mere scholars to helping professionals from

the 1980s onwards: developmental scientists are being called upon to generate

knowledge about many of the societal problems jeopardizing the development ofadaptive and productive life skills during the critical years of adolescence. Concern

about the current riskopportunity imbalance in the lives of urban adolescents has

risen with increases in the number of teenagers: living in poverty, abusing drugs and

alcohol, becoming victimized by or engaged in violence, manifesting depressivesymptomatology, and engaging in high-risk sexual activities and other health compro-

mising behaviors. They advise their fellow developmental scientists to maintain a

good balance between is and ought questions: a balance between scientific

44Dekker, The Will to Change the Child, 3435, 120128.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

16/21


responsibility and participant welfare is necessary, for: Incorporating participant

perspectives into our ethical decision making has the potential to contribute to boththe continued development of our science and the individuals whose participation

makes this science possible.45

One example is the ambition of the already mentioned Nelson to diagnose those

risk factors that predict potential emotional and behavioural disorders, or E/BD.46Of

11 domains containing in total 41 risk factors, five domains were predictive border-line/clinical levels of problem behaviour, namely externalising behaviour pattern,

internalising behaviour pattern, early childhood child maladjustment, family function-

ing, and maternal depression. Three risk factors were most robust, i.e. best predictive:

first difficult child, meaning temperament, parent management skills, interactionbetween temperament and parent management skill, all in the domain of family func-

tioning; second destroys own toys in the domain of externalising behaviour; finally

maternal depression, the only risk factor in the domain of the same name.47 In

distinguishing between fixed, variable and causal risk factors, Nelson et al. propose to

use the fixed and causal risk factors to develop assessment tools for screening.48Thus, apart from being at risk because of risky parents and family, children are

becoming increasingly at risk because of their own behaviour and their own charac-

teristics, becoming children with eating disorders, children at risk of emotional or

behavioural disorders, ADHD children, and highly talented children, amongst otherchild disorders.

Risky genotypes

Behind all behaviour stands the genotype. The use of biological elements as determin-ing risk factors for child behaviour has a long, although also cyclical, history, going

up with Lombrosos heredity studies of the criminal child, going down in the 1970s

with ideological protests against any form of biological study of deviant behaviour,

and again going up in the last few decades. Possible effects of parental risk factors and

child behavioural risk factors are now more and more related to the influence of thegenotype. In 2002, in Science, Caspi concludes that although childhood maltreatment

forms a universal risk factor, most maltreated children do not become delinquents or

adult criminals. On the question of why, he answers that those who are becoming

criminals do not have enough MAOA (Monoamine Oxidase A), a gene located on theX chromosome, thus focusing on the effects of biological aspects on human behav-

iour. Only when a history of childhood maltreatment goes together with insufficient

MAOA do children have a major risk of becoming adult criminals. Thus, Caspisuggests influencing the genotype by pharmacological treatment. Both attributable

risk and predictive sensitivity indicate that these findings could inform the develop-ment of future pharmacological treatments.49

45C.B. Fischer, A.Higgins-DAlessandro, J.-M.B. Rau, T.L. Kuther and S. Belanger,Referring and Reporting Research Participants at Risk: Views form Urban Adolescents,Child Development67 (1996): 20862100: 2086, 2097.46J.R. Nelson, S. Stage, K. Kuppong-Hurley, L. Synhorst and M.H. Epstein, Risk FactorsPredictive of the Problem Behavior of Children At Risk for Emotional and BehavioralDisorders.Exceptional Children73, no. 3 (2007): 367379, 368.

47Nelson et al., Risk Factors, 367, 375.48Nelson et al, Risk Factors, 368369, 376.49A. Caspi et al., Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children,Science297 (August 2002): 851854.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

17/21

32 J.J.H. Dekker

Multipliers of children at risk: Child Acts and childrens rights, and child science

In the preceding pages, a possible, although only partial, answer to the question why

the number of children at risk grew dramatically in the course of the twentieth century

has already been suggested. It seems that two twentieth-century phenomena, notwith-

standing their explicit focus on the interests of the child, were of major importance forthat very growth: first the child Acts and of the Childrens Rights movement, and

second child science.

The introduction of Child Protection Acts around 1900 was a milestone in the

history of children at risk. Until then, the balance between professional and parentalpower in the education of children at risk was sustained by moral and social limits, not

by legal ones. The success of residential re-education in pre-Children Act years was

dependent on the efforts of philanthropists and pedagogues such as Wichern and

Suringar to have the parents believe in their ideas on childrens deficiencies, forparental participation in childrens protection could not be forced by law. This caused

huge frustration to planned educational change, so strongly wanted by residential

re-educators. Therefore, the need for legal force grew in the last decades of the nine-

teenth century. As a result, re-education of children at risk did receive protection by

law through the introduction of Childrens Acts, starting in France in 1889 and thensubsequently established in all European countries around the turn of the century. For

the first time in history, the state made it mandatory for all parents and for all educa-

tors of children and youth to act according to fixed educational standards, with as the

ultimate consequence loss of parental power.50

In 1901, during the Parliamentary treatment of the Dutch Child Acts, the liberal

minister of Justice, P.W.A. Cort van der Linden (18461935), made clear that for him

risky parental behaviour and risky child behaviour were the exception, the state only

having the right to intervene after negative effects were observed: Only stopping, notpreventing is the responsibility of the state.51 This idea of children at risk as animportant but manageable problem began to change after the Second World War. In

1955, at the celebration of 50 years of child Acts, Mr J. Overwater (18921958), pres-

ident of the National Federation/Dutch Association for Child Protection, and also a

childrens court magistrate and a leading figure in the world of child protection,emphasised the growing market for child protection. According to him, in the first

years of the Child Acts it was about major shortcoming of parents. Nowadays,

these cases of major material neglect remain in the minority. Now, child protection is

dominated by cases of various sorts of education problems and behavioural problems.

Moreover, these problems, in contrast with the former majority material neglect cases,are not limited to one single social group, but exercise their bad influence upon the

society as a whole.52 Thus, according to Overwater, 50 years of child protection

50M.-S. Dupont-Bouchat, E. Pierre, J.-M. Fecteau, J. Trpanier, J.-G. Petit, B. Schnapper andJ.J.H. Dekker,Enfance et justice au XIXesicle. Essais dhistoire compare de la protectionde lenfance 18291914, France, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Canada(Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 2001).51L.A. Donker, Rede van de minister van justitie, mr. L.A. Donker, in Toespraken

gehouden ter herdenking van de gouden kinderwetten op 1 december 1955, in de Ridderzaalte sGravenhage(Den Haag: Ministerie van Justitie, 1955), 514, 7.

52J. Overwater, Rede van de voorzitter van de Nationale Federatie De Nederlandse Bond totKinderbescherming, in Toespraken gehouden ter herdenking van de gouden kinderwettenop 1 december 1955, 1523. Cf. J. Overwater, Kinderrechtspraak en kinderbescherming.Alphen aan den Rijn: Samsom, 1948.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

18/21


under the umbrella of Child Acts resulted in an increase in risks and of families and

children at risk. To address these increasing numbers of children at risk, measures hadto be taken: streamlining and professionalisation of the organisation, with more

influence of psychiatry, psychology and special educational science, and more profes-

sionals. With these measures, the future should become much better.

The multiplier effect of the international movement of childrens rights, culminat-

ing in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1989, was also important,as was made clear in the reports and articles on the maltreatment of children

mentioned earlier. Childrens rights and the UN convention are frequently used now

as the juridical basic for broad and sometimes further expanding definitions of the

maltreatment of children, with as an effect that the group of maltreated children is alsoexpanding. Therefore, apart from protecting children at risk, these rights also contrib-

ute to the expansion of this phenomenon.

Child science as multiplier of children at riskThe rise of child science around 1900, under the names of pedagogical pathology,child-study, pedology and experimental pedagogics, was the result of looking more

rationally at childhood. In addition to the neo-romantic enchantment of the child by

Key and her adherents, child and education were now also influenced by a process

named by the famous German sociologist Max Weber (18641920)Entzauberungordisenchantment. According to Weber: There are in principle no mysterious incalcu-

lable powers that play a role. Rather by calculation we can master everything. But that

means: the disenchantment of the world[emphasis added].53A firm belief was born

now in the possibility of getting in principle knowledge of the childrens world in toto.

All secrets of the young human being, including the so-called magic world of thechild, should and could be approached scientifically.54This rationalisation of the child

and education, including its magic aspects, was incompatible with the romantic and

enchanting image of childhood developed by Rousseau and the romantic poets, and

adopted by Key and the Vom Kinde ausmovement.In leaving the Century of the Child, and entering the twenty-first century, along-

side the earlier mentioned new balance between scientific responsibility and partici-

pant welfare of developmental scientists according to Fischer in 1996, a new

instrument in the history of expansion of children at risk emerged through a proposalby certain Dutch child scientists, and was accepted eagerly by the Dutch government.

By this I mean the electronic child dossier. This innovation, when introduced, makespossible prevention and supervision from conception until adulthood. Such a policy of

53M. Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehere(582613) [herausgegeben von Johannes Winckelmann, Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (PaulSiebeck), 1982 [orig. 1919]), 594. The English translation by A. Mitzman, The Iron Cage: An

Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Books,1985 [orig. 1969]), 226. Cf. P. Dassen, De onttovering van de wereld. Max Weber en het

probleem van de moderniteit in Duitsland 18901920 (Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1999),193, 369; M.L. Wax, Magic, Rationality and Max Weber, in Max Weber: critical

Assessments 2, P. Hamilton (London and New York: Routledge [or Kansas Journal of

Sociology3 (1967): 1219]), 5965.54M. Depaepe, Zum Wohl des Kindes? Pdologie, pdagogische Psychologie undexperimentelle Pdagogik in Europa und den USA, 18901940 (Weinheim: DeutscherStudien Verlag, 1993).

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

19/21

34 J.J.H. Dekker

prevention and supervision by professionals should diminish the number of children

developing into risky adults, so making the children happy and society safe. The ideabehind this strategy is that all children are potentially at risk, both through their own

behaviour and genotype, and through the educational behaviour of their parents. The

dossier will be introduced on 1 January 2010.55

This decision was based on advice sought by the former centre-right government

from the privateInventgroep, laid down in the report Helping with growing up andeducating: earlier, faster, and better of September 2005. This report, made by profes-

sional pedagogues, psychologists and medical doctors, advocates the necessity to

follow all children longitudinally and therefore to introduce the electronic dossier for

children, to be controlled centrally. According to the authors of this report, the dossiershould be kept as long as the interest of the child is served. The fact that through

this strategy a considerable number of families and children are considered as poten-

tially problematic, and that this would result in negative results like stigmatisation

and unnecessary costs should be accepted as collateral damage. Therefore, all

children together with their parents are, without being asked about this measure,brought under the supervision of the state and the professionals, both groups being

the winners in the story of the expansion of children at risk. The question on who has

access to the dossier is not yet decided. In 2005, the government suggested limiting

that access to the Municipal Health Service (GGD), other professionals only beingauthorised to add information, but not having access to the dossier. The professionals

behind this prevention and supervision strategy, however, advocate almost open

access.56

In addition to this dossier, the new government, supported by several child scien-

tists, is considering the introduction of compulsory screening of parental risks for all

parents of children aged 04 on variables like divorce, one-parent families, unemploy-ment, foreign origins, and other so-called risk factors, that information to be put in the

electronic child dossier, making it possible to follow all children and their parents until

age 23.57 If this is realised, the State will transform itself in an educational BigBrother, making all children potentially at risk and all parents potentially at risk, and

this with the support of at least a proportion of the child scientists. The process of child

policy being influenced by the pressure of other players in the field of children at risk

is typical of its history. Around 1900, the state introduced Child Acts under pressure

55Coalition Agreement between the Parliamentary Groups of CDA, PvdA and Christenunie, 7

February 2007, foundation paper for the centre-left or Christian-socialist BalkendeBosRouvoet government [Coalitieakkoord tussen de Tweede Kamerfracties van CDA, PvdA enChristenunie, 7 februari 2007], 30. The minister for Youth and Family Affairs, A. Rouvoet,member of the orthodox Protestant political party Christenunie, developed these ideas furtherinAlle kansen voor alle kinderen. Programma voor jeugd en gezin[All Opportunities for AllChildren: Programme for Youth and Family 20072011], the programme sent on 28 June2007 to the Second Chamber of Parliament.56One of the authors of the report mentioned, professor dr. J. Hermanns, was quoted in anewspaper interview as saying that everybody working with children, both professionallyand volunteers, should have access to the dossier, De Stentor, 13 September 2005; J.Hermanns et al.,Helpen bij opgroeien en opvoeden: eerder, sneller en beter. Een advies overvroegtijdige signalering en interventies bij opvoed en opgroeiproblemen [Helping with

Growing Up and Educating: Earlier, Faster, and Better] (Utrecht: Inventgroep, 2005), 11, 85,28: zou moeten krijgen. [every person working with children, either professional orvolunteer, should have access to the electronic dossier].57That proposal was laid down inAlle kansen voor alle kinderen.

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

20/21


from philanthropists and private organisations of childrens homes in countries like

Germany and the Netherlands. Around 2000, with the introduction of the electronicchild dossier, support and sometimes also pressure came from professional practitio-

ners and child scientists.

From the point of view of the main actors the history of children at risk is mainly

a history in the interests of the child. However, when looking at that history from a

distance it becomes more complex. Then, it seems to be much more a history of vari-ous and sometimes conflicting interests, including those of the child and his or her

family, of the professionals, with their professional status and need for sufficient jobs,

and finally of the state.

Conclusion

In the nineteenth century, attacking the problem of at-risk children, to be found only

among the lower strata of society, was seen as a tough job to be coped with success-

fully within a measurable time. Although even children at risk could eventuallybecome holy children, the romantic idea of childhood and the idea of childhood atrisk became an inconvenient combination. To cope with the new problem, thousands

of child-saving institutions were being built, mostly with private money. The introduc-

tion of the Child Protection Acts around 1900 was meant as a legal umbrella to protect

the already flourishing child protection practice even better, not to expand thephenomenon.

From the 1950s, however, and then, after a temporal diminution in the 1970s,

again from the 1980s, in a world that became richer and more child oriented than ever

before in history, the problem of children at risk increased both qualitatively, with new

child risks and new parental risks, and quantitatively, with even more parts of thepopulation at risk. It was a story of new risks, of more risks, of more risky risks, and

that on three levels: that of risky families and risky parents, that of risky children,

finally that of risky genotypes. Eventually, it became a story of a whole generation at

risk.Striking in explaining this long-term expansion of the phenomenon of the children

at risk after the nineteenth century is the impact of two so-called multipliers in a

century of the Child that was framed by a Weberian disenchantment with the childs

world. Although explicitly intended to work in the interests of the child, in thatCentury of the Child, so effectively put on the educational market by Ellen Key, both

the Child Acts and the childrens rights movement and also child science havefunctioned as major multipliers for the phenomenon of children at risk. As a result, the

Century of the Child seems, in the transition period between the twentieth and twenty-

first century, at least partly to have turned into a Century of the Child at Risk.

Notes on contributor

Jeroen J.H. Dekker is full professor and chair of history and theory of education at theUniversity of Groningen and president of the Groningen Research School for the Study ofthe Humanities. In 1998 and 2005, he was visiting professor at the History and CivilisationDepartment of the European University Institute in Florence. He is a former president and

secretary of ISCHE. He is one of the Editors-in-Chief of Paedagogica Historica, and visitingmember of the Editorial Board of History of Education. He specialises in the socialand cultural history of education. His publications deal with the history of marginality andchildren at risk, philanthropy and education, and the history of childhood and parenting. On

8/10/2019 dekker2009.pdf

21/21

36 J.J.H. Dekker

children at risk, he has written many articles and the book The Will to Change the Child: Re-education Homes for Children at Risk in Nineteenth Century Western Europe . Recently, he

published a book on the pedagogical meaning of images in history (Het verlangen naaropvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds de Gouden Eeuwtot omstreeks 1900(2006) (Educational Aspiration: On the Growth of the Pedagogical Spacein the Netherlands from the Golden Age until 1900).

dekker2009.pdf

Documents

Transcript of dekker2009.pdf