“WE ARE ONE BIG, HAPPY FAMILY”: BEYOND NEGOTIATION AND COMPULSORY HAPPINESS

‘‘WE ARE ONE BIG, HAPPY FAMILY’’: BEYOND NEGOTIATIONAND COMPULSORY HAPPINESS

Bruno Vanobbergen, Michel Vandenbroeck, Rudi Roose, and

Maria Bouverne-De Bie

Department of Education and Department of Social Welfare Studies

Ghent University

ABSTRACT. Much recent scholarship on changing educational practices in Western families focuses on theidea that negotiation has become the dominant approach to family household management. In this essay,Bruno Vanobbergen, Michel Vandenbroeck, Rudi Roose, and Maria Bouverne-De Bie examine the idea ofthe negotiation model functioning as a directive. To illustrate this process, they demonstrate how thecontemporary vocabulary about parental education affects the construction of parental beliefs and theconcepts that define research. The authors first present a genealogy of negotiation by looking at construc-tions of childhood and parenthood, as well as the educational practices that shape, and are in turn shapedby, these constructions. They then turn their attention to the concept of the autonomous self and its im-plications for family relations and family household practices.

In reviewing the literature on changing educational practices in Western fami-

lies, one inevitably encounters the idea that we have transitioned toward a family

household in which negotiation has become the dominant principle. The general

thesis is that since the 1970s, the management style within family households has

emphasized negotiation rather than command. Recently, historians of education

have expressed doubts about the tenability of the negotiation hypothesis, pointing

to the difficulty of configuring breaks within our Western history. In this article,

we do not focus on the question of whether today’s households are more embedded

in a sphere of negotiation than yesterday’s households. Our starting point lies

rather in the idea of how the negotiation model functions as a directive. This direc-

tive is not solely important in terms of the functioning of families, but in terms of

how social structures in general operate.1 The idea of negotiation is important to

all sorts of mediation in society — as in the case of restorative justice, for instance.

In this essay we will illustrate the negotiation model as a directive by articulating

how the contemporary vocabulary about parental education affects the con-

struction of parental beliefs and concepts of research. After a brief overview of ne-

gotiation as an educational concept and practice, we will present a genealogy of

negotiation by looking at constructions of childhood and parenthood as well as the

educational practices these constructions are shaped by and, in turn, are shaping.

We will focus in particular on the concept of the autonomous self and its im-

plications for family relations and family household practices. In the end we argue

that the development of the negotiation model has resulted in a kind of educa-

tional relation that is characterized by an increasing individual autonomy. How-

ever, at the same time, the negotiation hypothesis has in fact affirmed

1. Nikolas Rose, ‘‘The Death of the Social? Re-figuring the Territory of Government,’’ Economy andSociety 25, no. 3 (1996): 327–356.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY j Volume 56 j Number 4 j 2006� 2006 Board of Trustees j University of Illinois

423

predominant educational practices within their broader social context in which

parents are still held responsible for a good education, without taking into account

the actual educational practices of parents and the meanings they derive from

these practices.

CHANGING PRACTICES IN FAMILY HOUSEHOLDS: THE NEGOTIATION HYPOTHESIS

The identification of discrete periods in the history of educational thinking

and practices is a significant contribution to our knowledge of pedagogy. Since the

1970s, researchers studying the history of education and socialization have

described the main pattern of change that has taken place in family management

style as a transition from management by command to management by negotia-

tion. This analysis draws on the paradigm of civilization theory, which relies on

the psychological model of personality and personality development that Sigmund

Freud devised. Norbert Elias used Freud’s psychoanalytical theory to explain the

way in which the changing conditions of social interaction between people are

responsible for changing structures of personality in history.2 Elias’s study of the

civilizing process covers the late Middle Ages and early modern period up to the

French Revolution. He insisted that the macro- and microsociological changes that

took place in Europe over the course of several centuries had gradually changed the

whole apparatus of human relations. He introduced the notions Fremdzwang (con-

straints imposed by others) and Selbstzwang (internal constraints) as indicators of

the change in how people controlled their emotions. Abraham de Swaan was one of

the many social scientists captivated by the question of how Elias’s ideas could be

applied to the developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.3 Changes

in family life and the upbringing of children seem, he claims, to result from two

psychosocial figurations: (1) changes in the relations among the generations and (2)

changes in gender relations. According to de Swaan, the trajectory of these two

BRUNO VANOBBERGEN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Ghent University, De-partment of Education, Henri Dunantlaan 1, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium; email\[email protected][.His primary areas of scholarship are childhood studies and the history and philosophy of education.

MICHELVANDENBROECK is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Welfare Studies at GhentUniversity, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; email \[email protected][. Hisprimary areas of scholarship are child care and social welfare studies.

RUDI ROOSE is Professor in the Department of Social Welfare Studies at Ghent University, HenriDunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; email \[email protected][. His primary area of scholarship isyouth care.

MARIA BOUVERNE-DE BIE is Professor in the Department of Social Welfare Studies at Ghent Uni-versity, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; email\[email protected][. Her primary area ofscholarship is social welfare studies.

2. Jurgen Zinnecker, Negotiating Relations between Generations: Family Education and Socializationin ‘‘Civilizing’’ Western Societies. An International Debate and the Empirical Case of German History(paper presented at the SISWO Symposium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 1999).

3. Abraham de Swaan, ‘‘Vom Befehlsprinzip zum Verhandlungsprinzip. Uber neuere Verschiebungen imGefuhlshaushalt der Menschen,’’ in Der unendliche Prozess der Zivilisation. Zur Kultursoziologie derModerne nach Norbert Elias, eds. Helmut Kuzmics and Ingo Morth (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1991),173–198.

E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y VOLUME 56 j NUMBER 4 j 2006424

figurations in Western societies during the past few decades can be characterized as

follows: the balance of power between genders has changed in favor of women and

the balance of power between generations has changed in favor of the younger gen-

eration. This double shift describes the sociohistorical tendency that has been

called the transition from a command household to a negotiation household: ‘‘A

new educational ideology and practice has emerged, which we here call the nego-

tiation household, that has made the ‘old’ style of upbringing, the command house-

hold, obsolete.’’4 During the last one hundred years and especially in recent

decades, women and children have gained more power to shape their lives and to

have a say in personal and social matters. In addition, as power balances become

more equal, standard life-course models weaken, making room for more options

and less gender-bound life perspectives. This process is accompanied by a leveling

of class differences as well. Nowadays parents represent a generation of ‘‘negoti-

ators’’ with their children. This means, on the whole, more communication

between parents and children and also more reflection by parents on their

educational aims and strategies. From the 1960s onward, parental educational val-

ues and behavior have shifted from the traditional authoritarian approach to more

liberal and tolerant attitudes because of the general social trends toward seculariza-

tion and cultural and moral modernization in the West. The tremendous influence

of an increasingly protracted educational period and, as a consequence, the rising

influence of the peer group in the lives of young people, along with a loosening of

the bonds of social class as well as local and church traditions that guided parents

in the past, are responsible for liberal parental attitudes today.

During the 1980s and the 1990s much sociological and educational research

was focused on finding empirical evidence in favor of the negotiation hypothesis.

This research can be divided into two general categories: comparative research

between more and less developed countries in the present time (synchronic research)

and research on long-range developments within one or more regions, countries, or

continents (diachronic research). For example, Manuela du Bois-Raymond devel-

oped an empirical typology of parent-child relations that proved of value in de-

scribing German as well as Dutch families.5 Among the families participating in

her study, she found that in the grandparent’s generation a command style pre-

dominated, whereas the parents themselves practiced a much wider range of child-

rearing styles. Diachronic empirical research findings point to historical tendencies

such as increased restrictions in parental punishment methods (a rejection of

spanking, for instance), new balances of learning processes among the generations

(for example, an increased willingness of parents to learn from the child), growing

participation of children and youngsters in family decisions (as in participating in

planning what to do on holidays), and new modes of negotiation among the gen-

erations. The overall trend toward an increased number of negotiating households

is confirmed by nearly all empirical indicators.

4. Manuela du Bois-Raymond, ‘‘Negotiating Families,’’ in Childhood in Europe, eds. Manuela du Bois-Raymond, Heinz Suncker, and Heinz-Hermann Kruger (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 70.

5. Ibid.

VANOBBERGEN ET AL. Beyond Negotiation and Compulsory Happiness 425

Research within the history of education, however, has recently called into

question the negotiation hypothesis. This doubt does not relate to the concept of

negotiation itself so much as to the possibility of change. Marc Depaepe and Hans

van Crombrugge’s starting point lies in the complex process of educationalization—

‘‘the implicit set of rules that has grown inexorably stronger throughout modern

history and which concerns an ‘educationally correct’ way of dealing with chil-

dren, especially the ‘soft’ but simultaneously firm ‘psychosocial’ approach, which

is geared towards the interiorization of socially desirable or bourgeois norms.’’6

They question the situated demarcations assumed by the advocates of the negoti-

ation hypothesis by stating that binding affection from the child remains the

determining factor in educationally correct behavior, even after the turbulent,

revolutionary year of 1968. According to them, the fundamental rule of education-

alization continues to dominate parents’ child-rearing behavior to this day. This

does not mean that nothing has changed, but that, at their core, the patterns of in-

terpersonal relations characterizing childrearing have remained remarkably stable

over the years: ‘‘On the basis of our research into ‘educationalization,’ which set

out to map the growing role of child-rearing and education in modern society since

the eighteenth century, we believe that the ‘context’ of child-rearing has altered

fundamentally, but that the ‘text’ has not.’’7 Nelleke Bakker agrees with this idea

of order in progress.8 In her study of the Dutch advice literature for parents pub-

lished during the second half of the twentieth century, she concludes that parents

have always received the same old message of the need for tender and loving dis-

cipline — that is, of achieving the proper mix of control, support, and an appro-

priate amount of patience, tact, trust, and understanding. She further notes that

Dutch experts have always advised parents against the extremes of either giving

commands or discrediting their authority by negotiating things that cannot be

negotiated in parenting, such as mutual trust, love, and respect. Finally, Depaepe

touches upon another weakness of the negotiation hypothesis: it supports a view of

history as an inevitable march toward progress.9 In this approach history is seen as

an ever-improving evolution based on psychological changes in successive gen-

erations. Illustrative of this viewpoint is the psychogenetic theory of evolution of

Lloyd deMause. According to deMause, the history of relations between parents

and their children can be conceived as a gradual progression toward the empathic

mode of interaction, starting with infanticide and ending with the helping mode.

Educational practices have to be understood in terms of educational ambitions

that are embedded within all educational acting and that become alive through

6. Marc Depaepe and Hans van Crombrugge, Parent-Child Relationships in the Post-War Flemish Fam-ily: A Shift from Command to Negotiation? (paper presented at the SISWO Symposium, Amsterdam, TheNetherlands, October 1999), 4.

7. Ibid.

8. Nelleke Bakker, Child-Rearing in the Netherlands: Changing Styles or Changing Standards? (paperpresented at the SISWO Symposium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 1999).

9. Marc Depaepe, De Pedagogisering Achterna. Aanzet Tot een Genealogie van de Pedagogische Menta-liteit in de Voorbije 250 Jaar (Leuven: Acco, 1998).


different kinds of educational activities. These educational ambitions reveal what

is seen as important and valuable in educational theories. The realization of these

ambitions is not only a concern of formal educational institutions; they are also a

concern of parents and children. In their contact with formal educational in-

stitutions, parents and children work to realize their personal educational ambi-

tions. At the same time, these ambitions express an overall picture of parenthood

and childhood. In this way, parenthood and childhood are not arbitrary, discursive

products; instead, they refer to a discursive practice or set of practices. Analyzing

these generational practices should enable us to get an idea of what parenthood and

childhood mean today. So studying parenthood and childhood requires multiple

perspectives applied to the research goal of mapping the ‘‘kulturelle Grammatik’’

that structures the social and generational relations between children and adults in

a society.10 The goal of this relational approach is to arrive at a perspective on

parenthood and childhood that takes into account the social, economic, and cul-

tural contexts within which images of parents and children are currently shaped. In

the next section, we will contextualize the negotiation model and will analyze and

problematize the concepts that underlie it, such as ‘‘children’s agency,’’ the ‘‘auton-

omous child,’’ and ultimately ‘‘negotiation’’ as the dialogical educational promised

land.

A GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY

Constructions of childhood are inevitably connected to constructions of adult-

hood in general and parenthood in particular. They mirror each other, are inextri-

cably bound together, and therefore have to be viewed as one conceptually.

However, they are not to be seen — as is often believed — as each other’s opposites

or as antagonists. The mirror image of the fragile, powerless, and silenced child

(a characterization that is rightly criticized within the literature of the sociology of

childhood) is obviously not a strong, powerful, and silencing adult.11 On the con-

trary, historical research reveals that they are both deeply embedded within local

and international political and social contexts.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the family has developed as a

key function within western European democracies and has formed the basis for

social order. The model of middle-class family life has been represented as the

answer to social problems such as poverty, child mortality, and criminality. By

setting its own behavioral repertoire as an example for the working class, the middle

class has not only functioned passively as a role model, but it has also deliberately

tried to influence the behavior of the working class. Within this model, the head of

the family — that is, the man — economically supports the nonactive family

members, such as his wife and children. Problems with the upbringing of working-

class children that middle-class advocates attributed to ‘‘dangerous’’ and ‘‘family-

undermining’’ employment of women in factories were taken care of by private

10. Michael Sebastian Honig, Entwurf einer Theorie der Kindheit (Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 1999).

11. See, for example, Allison James, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout, Theorizing Childhood (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1998).


initiatives such as care-giving for mother and child. It is well documented how,

during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rise of statistical,

hygienic, and eugenicist sciences; the spread of industrialization and urbanization;

the abolition of child labor; and other measures meant to ‘‘protect’’ the child ‘‘in

need’’ were underpinned by the discursive construction of fragile children.12 With

child mortality and youth criminality being major social concerns, philanthropic

and charitable organizations for the very young emerged in all western European

countries, bringing about a massive campaign for the enculturation of the working

class. It is also quite clear that this construction of the fragile child in need of pro-

tection went hand in hand with the construction of a mother with a dual responsi-

bility. Working-class mothers were believed to be responsible for their children’s

well-being and child mortality was perceived as an offense of the mother toward

her child as well as toward society at large. A close analysis of official reports and

policy recommendations in Belgium from this period reveals that child mortality

was never attributed to the context the families were living in, but always either to

the neglect or to the ignorance of those mothers.13 Children needed protection —

provided not by the adults in general, but by the bourgeoisie — against their work-

ing-class parents. The bourgeois philanthropic initiatives made it possible to inter-

vene within the working-class families when they deviated from the middle-class

family model, while this model continued to accentuate the inviolability of the

family life. The private family was seen as a necessary counterpart to a harsh out-

side world — that is, as a ‘‘haven in a heartless world.’’14

With the privatization of the family, the care for the family also became insti-

tutionalized. Families were seen as being unable to provide for their own needs

without the supervision of trained experts. This resulted in the first child protec-

tion law in Belgium, passed on May 15, 1912, concerning the protection of the

child against his or her ‘‘unworthy parents’’ by entrusting the child’s care to pri-

vate initiatives in such cases. Because the proper upbringing of the child within

the family was seen as an important measure for preventing future social prob-

lems, the family became liable to social sanctions. The purpose of this transition

was to change deviant family patterns and to introduce new educational percep-

tions. Unlike the earlier charitable care, ‘‘modern’’ care had to be methodologically

substantiated and directed toward preventive educational actions meant ‘‘to help

families help themselves.’’ Self-control became a key word: social service agencies

had to ‘‘make themselves redundant’’ by teaching people to change their behavior

and to deal with problematic situations more effectively. The central place of the

family in society has two principal effects: (1) the concept of ‘‘the family’’ makes it

12. See, for example, Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (Lon-don and New York: Longman, 1995); and Harry Hendrick, ‘‘Constructions and Reconstructions of BritishChildhood: An Interpretative Survey, 1800 to the Present,’’ in Constructing and Reconstructing Child-hood, eds. Allison James and Alan Prout (London and Washington D.C.: Falmer Press, 1997), 34–62.

13. Michel Vandenbroeck, ‘‘From Creches to Childcare: Constructions of Motherhood and Inclusion/Exclusion in the History of Belgian Infant Care,’’ Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 4, no. 2 (2003):137–148.

14. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977).


possible to control social problems through social-political interventions, and (2) it

also provides the structure for the design and legitimization of those services that

undertake such interventions. This understanding of the family and its educational

task has helped to shape the field of ‘‘social work’’: a totality of institutional social

services concerned with the family and the education of a productive, qualified

work force.15 The construction of childhood as fragile is thus clearly bound to a

specific construction of the responsible mother and of the family as reproductive of

social order, but, as Hugh Cunningham rightly observes, the identification of child-

hood as an area for state policy was accompanied and to some extent caused by

declining confidence in the family’s ability to fulfill its social function.16

After the Second World War, the two-income family became materially and

culturally (again) a standard model. Developmental psychology in general and at-

tachment psychology in particular gain importance during periods in which child

mortality decreases and the attention shifts to securing children’s ‘‘mental health.’’

Many scholars have criticized developmental and attachment psychology for

silencing children and reinforcing the older paradigm of the fragile child in need of

adult protection and education (understood as secure attachment and developmen-

tal stimulation).17 Moreover, they have shown how these approaches also re-

inforced the construction of the ‘‘responsible mother’’ and employed their ‘‘expert

knowledge’’ of children to silence this mother. Again, the Belgian case is a good ex-

ample, where massive governmental investments in infant and toddler con-

sultation schemes were justified as measures necessary for educating young

mothers in the new scientific insights about childrearing. Substantial reductions in

poverty were the material consequence of the evolving life circumstances (that is,

the reemergence of two-income households), but these changes also had cultural

consequences: when both partners in a marriage are wage earners, this affects the

division of tasks and corresponding role patterns within the family. As with society

in general, the family became more individualized from the 1960s onward. As a re-

sult, emphasis shifted from the economic welfare of the family to the well-being of

relations among family members. The heightened attention on family relations

increased the demand for self-development opportunities for all members of the

family. A wider range of behavior came to be considered acceptable, and, in turn,

these behaviors became subject to new conventions, such as the necessity for mu-

tual consultation and reciprocal agreement. The interaction between partners, and

between parents and their children, was less subject to rules that dictated the

result than in the middle-class family model, but it played a more compelling role

in shaping family relations: this happened through personal interaction and nego-

tiation among members, and emphasized the importance of respecting the rights of

each individual family member. At the same time, social policy toward the family

15. Jacques Donzelot, La Police des Familles (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977).

16. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500.

17. See, for example, Erica Burman, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (London: Routledge,1994); and Gaile Canella, Deconstructing Early Childhood Education: Social Justice and Revolution(New York: Peter Lang, 1997).


became emancipatory, with eliminating gender discrimination and recognizing the

children’s rights as central points of focus. These were related to the development

of new social services, including institutions and facilities providing support to

families and education on such topics as interpersonal relations, sexuality, and

birth control.

The ‘‘new’’ Belgian law on child protection, adopted on April 8, 1965, exempli-

fies the shift to an emphasis on the quality of family relations in family policy.

Assistance in the upbringing and education of the child was an important area of

focus. It was viewed as a means to ‘‘activating’’ parents to fulfill their educational

responsibility. A new facility — the ‘‘social protection’’ agency — was established

to assist in this task of activating parents. Parents’ recognition and implementa-

tion of their educational role has long been seen as an important condition for good

social integration of the children. This was already a crucial element of the 1912

child protection law. In the context of the individualizing society with a diverse

range of family forms and careers, however, this task could no longer be forced on-

to families, but needed to be activated through negotiation. Therefore, a basic prin-

ciple underlying the 1965 law on child protection is the need to educate parents

about the importance of negotiation as a methodological tool for realizing ‘‘good’’

education. The effect of the new law was to increase state intervention within

families. The postulated ‘‘democratic’’ family model assumes that all individual

members will demonstrate relational and parental competency, and that this will

be realized regardless of social conditions, including differences in available family

time, in living accommodations, and in cultural capabilities or empathy for eman-

cipation demands. The paradoxical position of the family that results from the

contrast between these high demands and the differences in potential for individ-

ual families to fulfill them has made the family into a ‘‘nourishing institution.’’

Because the family is viewed by society as a shelter where one can be oneself,

away from the tough outside world, this outside world has for the most part not

been discussed within the debate concerning the family. At the same time the

family is viewed as problematic when it fails to fulfill certain predetermined ambi-

tions and is perceived as the cause of growing social problems. For these reasons, a

number of educational facilities have been established, and these have increased

the control over families.

FAMILIES AS NEGOTIATED INSTITUTIONS

The present-day focus on negotiation as an educational norm can be observed

through the construction of a specific vocabulary that shapes the way we think

about parents; through the growing interest in government-funded research on the

practices characteristic of parental education, aimed at informing policies; and

through shifts in parental beliefs about what qualifies as ‘‘good education.’’

Throughout the 1990s, for instance, du Bois-Raymond studied how negotiation op-

erated in families under the authority of a Dutch governmental organization.18 She

observed that in many of the publications around this issue, negotiation is depicted

18. Du Bois-Raymond, ‘‘Negotiating Families.’’


as the ultimate ‘‘good.’’ This is made explicit by the construction of a typology of

parenting modes that uses labels such as authoritarian and permissive or ‘‘laissez-

faire’’ (that bear clearly negative connotations) and the more positive sounding

‘‘authoritative’’ label for negotiating parents. At present, this vocabulary has become

hegemonic in academic research on parenting in the field of psychology as well as

in the field of education.19 It is not only used as the ultimate label for ‘‘good parent-

ing’’ but it is also assumed to be an accurate predictor of adolescent and adult

behavior.

Du Bois-Raymond’s research is just one of a growing number of studies that

national governments have commissioned or funded in order to monitor the nego-

tiation processes within families. Similar ethnographic research was undertaken

during the same period in several Scandinavian countries, also in close connection

to their governments.20 In 1999, the Flemish (Belgian) governmental organization

responsible for children and families produced a large survey on this topic, con-

cluding that within families negotiation is generally accepted as the norm for edu-

cation. The vast majority of children live in families where the parents say that

they favor the child’s autonomy and that decisions are primarily made in con-

sultation with them. Our concern here is not so much to determine whether the

majority of Flemish families indeed do negotiate with their children but to note

that they perceive negotiation as the educational norm for them as parents. Re-

cently, the Flemish Children’s Rights Commissioner ordered a large-scale study on

negotiation within the family, interviewing children as well as their parents. The

research findings seem to show that parents more often report that they negotiate

with their children (on subjects such as holidays, television, clothing, leisure time,

and the like) than their children do. The researchers assume that the difference in

opinion is due to an overestimation by the parents and not an underestimation on

the part of the children, although no field observations have been carried out to

substantiate this assumption. They conclude that parents have certain problems

and insecurities about their educative role in the family and that they are in need

of parent support programs.21 Research suggests that this conclusion is largely ac-

cepted by parents themselves.

19. For an example of this trend in psychology scholarship, see Paula Villar, Maria Angeles Luengo, JoseAntonio Gomez-Fraguela, and Estrella Romero, ‘‘Assessment of the Validity of Parenting Constructs Us-ing the Multitrait-Multimethod Model,’’ European Journal of Psychological Assessment 22, no. 1 (2006):59–68. For an example of this trend in education scholarship, see Jelani Mandara, ‘‘The Impact of FamilyFunctioning on African American Males’ Academic Achievement: A Review and Clarification of the Em-pirical Literature,’’ Teachers College Record 108, no. 2 (2006): 206–223. On the broad reach of this trendacross cultures, see Marwan Dwairy and Kariman E. Menshar, ‘‘Parenting Style, Individuation, and Men-tal Health of Egyptian Adolescents,’’ Journal of Adolescence 29, no. 1 (2006): 103–117.

20. Oleg Langsted and Hanne Haavind, ‘‘La Garde Durant la Journee et la Famille: La Vie Quotidiennedes Enfants en Scandinavie,’’ in Rapport de la Conference sur l‘Emploi des Parents et la Garde des En-fants, ed. Ministere danois des Affaires Sociales (Copenhagen : Ministere danois des Affaires Sociales,1993).

21. Lieven De Rijcke, ‘‘Beleving van het Gezin: De Relatie Tussen Ouders en Kinderen,’’ in Kom jedat thuis eens vertellen? Visies van ouders en kinderen op het dagelijkse leven in het gezin, eds. LeenAckaerts, Peter Brants, Lieven De Rijcke, and Bea Van den Bergh (Leuven: ACCO, 2003), 53–84.


This ‘‘history of the present’’ perspective reveals how constructions of child-

hood/parenthood are conceptually united and how both children and their mothers

are weakened or silenced by the dominant discourse on the family. Power relations

have a much more subtle and reciprocal nature than is often recognized, as Michel

Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu have shown. To avoid a reductionist view of power

relations, according to Bourdieu, one needs to take into account the perspective of

the actors as being fully part of the social world. The subjectivist vision considers

social reality as a fragile and continuous realization of competent actors construct-

ing their social world.22 This perspective can be seen as a plea for research on how

discourse is spoken into practice, or, to put it in Foucauldian terms, to look at how

both discourses and techniques operate in the construction of subjectivities.23 A

closer analysis indeed reveals how parents themselves have contributed to their

own silencing by taking over a lay version of the expert discourse on devel-

opmental stages and parental responsibility from an educationalist’s perspective.

We might also conclude that these constructions are historical and that childhood

cannot be studied in isolation from society as a whole, notwithstanding the fact

that contextual issues are not addressed when educationalists discuss the family.

Arguably, the factors that have most affected childhood, both as a set of ideas and

as a phase of life, have been economic and demographic, followed closely by politi-

cal factors. There is no obvious reason to believe that things are significantly differ-

ent today. Indeed, let us return to the present-day discourse on negotiation. If it is

true that there is a new paradigm of an autonomous child and of educational prac-

tices (inspired by a dialogical pedagogy and negotiating educators), and if it is true

that we can look upon this paradigm as empowering — or, better still, ‘‘liberating’’ —

children, this raises the following question: liberating them from what, or from

whom?

The shift in paradigm is often described as a significant turn. For instance,

Allison James, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout coined the term the ‘‘presociological

child’’ to describe the construction of the fragile child and maintained that on this

view the child served as ‘‘the dustbin of history.24 This seems to be a remarkably

modernistic understanding of postmodernism. Many scholars state that the end of

the millennium is more than the change of an arbitrary date. They suggest that,

historically, changes in millennia have been accompanied by deep changes in the

relation of individuals to authority and in the way social life is organized. Ulrich

Beck uses the concept of the post-traditional society, in which the classic division

of individuals into groups (based on such differences as gender and class) is no

longer sufficient to understanding how people think and feel, what their con-

victions are, and how they relate to the authorities.25

22. Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984).

23. Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984 (London:Routledge, 1990).

24. James, Jenks, and Prout, Theorizing Childhood, 9.

25. Ulrich Beck, ‘‘Democratization of the Family,’’ Childhood 4, no. 2 (1997): 151–168.


Because the old borderlines are fading (for instance, between men and women,

laborers and clerks, and so on), the individual has more choices. For Foucault, too,

the most important characteristic of our modern rationalism is that the integra-

tion of individuals in a social totality originates from a continuous simultaneity of

their steadily increasing individualization and the reinforcement of this totality.26

Many decisions concerning the construction of a family — to get or to remain mar-

ried, whether and when to have children, what school to choose — are individual

decisions, at least in our perception. The connection with former traditions is un-

clear. Autonomy, freedom of choice, and independence are the new values. In this

light, the individual is his or her own entrepreneur in a regime of self-governance.

These new norms also stress fostering the development of the autonomous self as

an educative objective in childcare.27 This tendency also has a drawback, however:

the individual decision coincides with an individual responsibility. ‘‘Not to

choose’’ has become impossible; we are now responsible for the consequences of

the choices we make. This de-traditionalized individual coincides with the con-

struction of the autonomous self, which accentuates two values, namely, openness

and honesty. On this understanding, self-analysis of one’s feelings and thoughts is a

value in itself; moreover, all this needs to be discussed. ‘‘Deliverance’’ from tradi-

tions, moral norms, and gender roles does not necessarily lead to freer individuals,

as Foucault made clear.28 The individuals freed from traditional constraints discover

that they are dependent on the labor market, training offers, and social welfare reg-

ulations and benefits.

This development reinforces families as negotiated institutions. The birth of a

child, for instance, is a negotiation of the single mother or of the married or un-

married heterosexual or homosexual couple living together. The negotiation does

not only concern the relation between the partners, but their relation with the

child as well. Since the 1960s, there has been a demand for negotiation as an edu-

cative ideal, and, in the last decades of the twentieth century, this ideal became

elevated to the norm. This shift is well illustrated by the success of books such as

Thomas Gordon’s popular Parent Effectiveness Training, which, since its first

appearance in 1970, was in its twentieth edition in Dutch by 1998.29 To a much

greater extent than in previous centuries, child-rearing has become a matter of

negotiation between parents and children, with the state and other agencies mon-

itoring and inspecting the process. In this process, ideas about childhood that exist

in the public domain act as a framework within which adults and children work

out ways of living. There are indeed many examples of state-commissioned

26. Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture.

27. Peter Moss, ‘‘Getting beyond Childcare: Reflections on Recent Policy and Future Possibilities,’’ inRethinking Children’s Care, eds. Peter Moss and Julia Brannen (Buckingham: Open University Press,2003).

28. Michel Foucault, L‘Hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au College de France 1981–1982 (Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2001).

29. Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Chil-dren (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1970).


research that investigates — or monitors — negotiation practices in families in

different countries, including The Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, or Flanders

in Belgium.

Poststructuralist researchers have claimed that the pedagogical focus on the

autonomous child and its attention to self-expression are typically linked to the

liberal, free market–oriented society that is always in need of autonomous, entre-

preneurial individuals.30 The conclusion that self-expression and individuality rank

higher on the educational agenda than solidarity or discipline is a rather recent

social and historical construction, in line with theories of globalization and

neoliberalism, not only in the West, but also in the East. Erica Burman explains

that the attention paid to the autonomous child is linked with the rational, unitary

subject that is so central in psychology because it represents the self-regulating,

responsible citizen in late industrialized society — that is, the individual taxpayer,

the bearer of legal responsibilities, the rational individual of the free market econo-

my.31 Nikolas Rose similarly observes that the language of self-realization is one of

therapeutic individualism.32 In Anthony Giddens’s Third Way, he sees the trend to-

ward individualizing social phenomena as linked to neoliberalism in the interna-

tional economy and to a naıve enthusiasm for the mantras of managerial gurus.33

Indeed, it is paradoxical that the politics of the Third Way may involve efforts for

social inclusion that actually create systems of exclusion, and attempts to expand

civil society that ultimately serve to enhance the regulating powers of the state,

including practices for individual empowerment that in fact diminish popular

control.

One could argue that the autonomous, entrepreneurial individual has been

constructed in reaction to the weakened nation-states in the era of globalization

and, therefore, represents how changes in a specific mode of thought and govern-

ing, rather than inevitably creating more freedom for the child or the adult (as as-

sumed in the view of history as progress), instead create a specific form of

freedom.34 We can indeed observe some specific changes in governing, including

the fact that the intimate participation of the state in the lives of its citizens

appears to have been replaced by a more distant form of governance. The relation

between the state and the individual is evolving toward a partnership built on

mutuality and reciprocity, with a commonsense feeling that there are no rights

without responsibilities. Social services in this context are no longer simple

30. See, for example, Joseph Tobin, ‘‘The Irony of Self-Expression,’’ American Journal of Education 103,no. 3 (1995): 233–258; and Canella, Deconstructing Early Childhood Education.

31. Burman, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology.

32. Nikolas Rose, ‘‘Community, Citizenship, and the Third Way,’’ The American Behaviorist Scientist43, no. 9 (2000): 1395–1411.

33. Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press,1998).

34. Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, ‘‘An Adequate Education in a Globalised World? A Note onImmunisation against Being-Together,’’ Journal of Philosophy of Education 36, no. 4 (2002): 589–608.


entitlements, but entail personal responsibility and self-sufficiency on the part of

the individual. The individual is supposed to commit him- or herself to lifelong

learning, and he or she is in this (Third) way partly responsible for the (in-

dividualized) risk of unemployment. As Tom Popkewitz argues, policies affecting

the new child are made in the name of democracy and liberty in a global world:

‘‘The salvation theme is of future economic progress and the promise of equity and

justice in schools..The redemptive language of modern pedagogy is to help chil-

dren become good citizens, better adjusted people, and active learners.’’35

Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons draw the conclusion that the entrepre-

neurial self, as they call it, is expected to take charge of his or her own future.36

The reverse side of the new freedom that is supposed to be created is the obligation

to inform oneself of different possibilities, to balance them in a cost-effect analysis,

and to make rational decisions about the best possible investment (in children, in

one’s own education, and so on) for the future. In this sense, the discourse on the

autonomy of adults as well as children constructs a responsible citizen as one who

has individual responsibility over his or her lifelong learning course, his or her own

employment and social integration, the education of his or her own children, and

so on, thus masking structural inequalities.

A close look at the way family education has evolved over time shows that

the history of modernity cannot simply be written in terms of growing freedom for

children or for any individual. On the contrary, the concept of freedom seems to

have evolved into compulsory happiness, where specific techniques of the self

function as techniques for governing freedom. It also shows how constructions of

childhood and parenthood are interconnected with the wider political and social

structures. The focus on children’s agency and negotiation as educational norms is

closely intertwined with globalization, neoliberalization, and a renewed conceptu-

alization of the welfare state in which social problems tend to be individualized.

Interest-based negotiation is perceived to be preparation for the adult’s life in a

modern democracy that favors individual autonomy over interdependency. In this

vein, the liberation of childhood seems to be another salvation theme — one that

functions as a regime of truth. Salvation themes encompass certain educational

and cultural practices that relate to social exclusion as well as inclusion. Within

these practices, normalized qualities of the child and parent inscribe systems of

exclusion by constituting children and parents who do not fit the distinctions and

dispositions of reasonable people. On this analysis, looking at children as a sepa-

rate category — in contrast to adults — may lead to a better understanding of and

recognition for children, but it may at the same time mask some commonalities in

how specific groups of children and their parents are marginalized and silenced.

35. Tom Popkewitz, ‘‘Partnerships, the Social Pact, and Changing Systems of Reason in a ComparativePerspective,’’ in Educational Partnerships and the State: The Paradoxes of Governing Schools, Childrenand Families, eds. Barry M. Franklin, Marianne Bloch, and Tom Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave Macmil-lan, 2003), 37.

36. Masschelein and Simons, ‘‘An Adequate Education in a Globalised World?’’


THE EDUCATIONALIST AS NEGOTIATING EXPERT

Social and educational facilities have their own specific place in this develop-

ment. On the one hand, they contribute to an increase in the capacity of parents.

Not only do they fulfill the wish of parents to raise their children in the best way

possible, but they also meet the social demand for preventing deviant behavior and

guaranteeing all children a good education. On the other hand, by profiling them-

selves as educational experts, these same social and educational facilities contrib-

ute to parental insecurity and to a negative perception of those parents who

choose not to participate in educational facilities considered socially necessary or

desirable. This process is reinforced by the focus on an evidence-based approach

and by the emphasis on efficacy and efficiency of educational interventions, as

seen, for instance, in the popular managerial framework of ‘‘total quality care.’’

Currently, a lot of attention has been given to the organization of parental training,

and these initiatives have been represented as highly effective. But the claim that

such initiatives are effective considers only those parents who have had positive

experiences and who agreed with the definition of the problem in the first place.

Furthermore, it suggests that parents who do not participate in such initiatives (for

instance, those who view their situation as a problem of poverty rather than an ed-

ucational problem) are to blame for social problems. Put another way, parents who

do recognize themselves in the facilities and therefore experience them as suppor-

tive are often regarded as responsible parents; parents who do not cooperate are

labeled as irresponsible and are often treated in a more repressive manner. To take

one example, the mayor of a Flemish city recently proposed fining parents whose

children committed a crime if the parents did not subsequently participate in a pa-

rental training course. This kind of parental support is a good illustration of the

type of educational practice that includes as well as excludes.37

The development of the negotiation model in education goes hand in hand

with a change in the educational relation that has moved us toward an increased

focus on individual autonomy. The approach of educational practices within their

broader social context, also the basis for the structure of families, has not changed.

The marginalization of parents in educational discussions is a natural outgrowth

of the historical development of educational practices in which experts have taken

a dominant position. As a result of this development, educational discussion is

mainly controlled by experts’ discourses, which are then adopted by parents in a

mutual dependency. Consequently, there is need for more contextualized research

that not only looks at actual educational practices in a wide range of families, but

also takes into account the ways in which parents make meaning of these practi-

ces. This may be beneficial for constructing dialogues that bridge expert and paren-

tal discourses and for taking into account the realities of diverse parents, as well as

their various interpretations of these realities, in constructing educational con-

cepts. When we reduce parental participation to applying a narrow methodological

37. Barry M. Franklin, Marianne Bloch, and Tom Popkewitz, ‘‘Educational Partnerships: An IntroductoryFramework,’’ in Educational Partnerships and the State, eds. Franklin et al., 1–23.


principle (that is, negotiation) in order to realize ‘‘good’’ education,’’ families

remain vulnerable to state intervention when their educational practice deviates

from the currently dominant educational model.

CONCLUSION

The centrality of social practices and relations in the construction of educa-

tional models leads us to the question of how educationalists handle the negotia-

tion of these practices and relations, and, in this, how they construct an image of

themselves in relation to parents and children.38 One way to handle this question

is to define the educationalist as an expert who holds the answers to many prob-

lems. When faced with complex and contextual problems (and their own perceived

inadequacy for dealing with these), educationalists tend to reduce and compart-

mentalize those problems. In doing so, they reconstruct their clients’ problems to

fit their own educational vision. By taking this approach, educationalists, whether

intentionally or not, promote the homogenization of education. Educationalists

present their efforts as empowering and participatory, pointing to client sat-

isfaction as the desirable outcome that legitimizes their actions.39 A contrasting

approach would be based on the idea that dialogue with families is embedded in

a powerful relation. From this standpoint, the empowered position of educationalists

obliges them to justify their interventions and to reflect on the effects they pro-

duce. Because educational practices are uncertain, parents, children, and educa-

tionalists must struggle together with how best to solve concrete problems. In this

approach, fundamental change in educational practice is seen as the result of such

a partnership — one in which reflection on and discussion about societal develop-

ments and the changing position of families are viewed as important and serve as

the starting point for a dialogue between educationalists and parents about their

reciprocal roles and responsibilities.

38. Arnon Bar-On, ‘‘Restoring Power to Social Work Practice,’’ British Journal of Social Work 32, no. 8(2002): 997–1014.

39. Christopher Hall, Kirsi Juhila, Nigel Parton, and Tarja Poso, Constructing Clienthood in Social Workand Human Services: Interaction, Identities and Practices (London and New York: Jessica KingsleyPublishers, 2003).


Documents

“WE ARE ONE BIG, HAPPY FAMILY”: BEYOND NEGOTIATION AND COMPULSORY HAPPINESS