Parenting Support in the Dutch 'Participation Society'

Abstract

This article focuses on 'the turn to parenting' in the Netherlands and embeds it in a major reform called 'transition and transformation'. While support for parenting by way of public healthcare and denominational family care and advice has a long tradition in the Netherlands, The field gained new importance in the 1990s under the influence of medical and psychological 'scientification' and the introduction of evidence-based methods. Current reforms are modulated with a critique of specialised forms of parent support and (re-)introduce a community-and family-based approach in which professionals are charged with helping families to help themselves and with guiding and supervising volunteers who actually do the job of parenting support.