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Children at risk in history: a story of
expansion
Jeroen J.H. Dekker
a
a
University of Groningen , The Netherlands
Published online: 20 Apr 2009.
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Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 45:1-2, 17-36, DOI:
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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 Netherlands
Taylor and Francis Ltd CPDH_A_374790.sgm 10.1080/00309230902746206 Paedagogica Historica 0030-9230 (print)/1477-674X (online) Original Article 2009 Taylor & Francis 45 1-2 0000002009 JeroenDekker j.j.h.dekker@rug.nl
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. Although this
is 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 of
history indeed seems to indicate growth. This is a paradox when looking at the
social, economic and scientific development of the Western world. Although the
ambition 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; risky
families; 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 the
editors, 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.
1
According to Maureen Conroy, editor of one of the booklets: Recently,
we have seen a startling increase in the number of young children who demonstrate
challenging behaviors in early childhood settings. Many of these young children are
at risk for later being identified as having E/BD.
2
Therefore, 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: j.j.h.dekker@rug.nl
1
L.M. 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.
2
Conroy, Prevention and Early Intervention, 1.
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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 intervention
and 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 growth
seems 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 risks
related 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 the
story 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 out
another way. Sensitivity with historical contingency is therefore necessary.
4
The
contingent historical outcome is the result of both institutions, like the church, the
state and professional organisations, and of individual actors, often joining each other
in networks.
5
This 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
3
Conroy, Prevention and Early Intervention, 1112.
4
Cf. T. Nijhuis, Structuur en contingentie. Over de grenzen van het sociaalwetenschappelijk
verklaringsideaal in de Duitse geschiedschrijving (PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1995).
5
Cf. special issue on Networks and the History of Education, ed. E. Fuchs, D. Lindmark and
CH. Lth, Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2007).
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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, it
focuses 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 risk
Holy 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 from
Blakes 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 child
itself 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 Emile of 1762. He asserted the right of a child to be a child and to be happy
as 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 few
pedagogical bestsellers, in that respect comparable only to Emile by 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
6
M.S. Baader, Die romantische Idee des Kindes und der Kindheit. Auf der Suche nach der
verloren 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.
7
Hwang, 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. and
M.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).
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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, she
borrowed 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.
9
This concept originated in Humanistic and Reformation Europe, as can be
seen in texts by Desiderius Erasmus and Jacob Cats, and made famous by John
Locke in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education of 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 third
image 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 educational
activism.
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
8
R. Drbing, Der Traum vom Jahrhundert des Kindes. Geistige Grundlagen, soziale
Implikationen und reformpdagogische relevanz der erziehungslehre Ellen Keys (Frankfurt
am 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 between
Romanticism and Disenchantment in (Residential) Youth Care from the 1830s to 2000, in
Professionalization and Participation in Child and Youth Care. Challenging understandings
in 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. International
Journal of Childrens Rights 8 (2000), 133150.
9
Cunningham, 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 in
the seventeenth century. Paedagogica Historica 44 (2008), 137151; Jeroen J.H. Dekker,
Het verlangen naar opvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds
de Gouden Eeuw tot omstreeks 1900 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006), 4350.
10
J. Innes, Church and Voluntarism, in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform. From the 1690s
to 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 raising
vulnerable 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.
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Paedagogica Historica 21
of philanthropists.
11
The child at risk was born. Various methods of intervention were
proposed and introduced, including improvement of schooling and family patronage
systems, 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, in
the 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 far
removed 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 the
other 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.
12
That these
children were indeed children at risk is made clear by the description from Horace
Mann (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
11
J.J.H. Dekker, The Will to Change the Child: Re-education Homes for Children at Risk in
Nineteenth 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 XVIII
e
sicle (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 321; A. Farge, Marginaux. In
Dictionnaire des Sciences Historiques, ed. A. Burguire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1986), 436438; C. Bec, C. Duprat, J.-N. Luc and, J.-P. Petit, eds, Philanthropies et
politiques sociales en Europe (XVIII
e
XX
e
sicles) (Paris: Anthropos, 1994).
12
In 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 the
Children 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 broad
German, Lindmeier, Die Pdagogik, 443444. Cf. H. Lilje, Johann Hinrich Wichern 1808
1881, in Die grossen Deutschen. Deutsche Biographie, Vol. 3, ed. H. Heimpel, Th. Heuss
and B. Reifenberg (Berlin, 1956), 376388.
13
Carpenter, 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.
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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 for
philanthropic pilgrimages like that by Horace Mann. Visitors wrote enthusiastic
reports, which made the Rauhe Haus even more famous.
14
In 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,
16
the colony was, nevertheless, accord-
ing to Michel Foucault, who made Mettray famous in his classic Surveiller et punir of
1975, the disciplinary form at its most extreme, the model in which are concentrated
all the coercive technologies of behaviour.
17
For 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 colony
in 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.
18
According to them, Mettray as well as
similar institutions belonged to the civilised world in the words of Wines, a world
that cares about its children at risk.
19
According to the contemporary testimonies of
14
H. 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 impact
on Great Britain of the French home of Mettray was more important.
15
Wines, The State, 75. The Enlightened philanthropic Dutch society the Nut considered the
cottage 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 de
Maatschappij tot Nut van t Algemeen, bewerkt door mr. J.A. Levy, P.H. Hugenholz jr., Jhr.
mr. A.J. Rethaan Macar (Amsterdam, 1898), 193.
16
Rapport Annuel adress MM les membres de la Socit Paternelle, Colonie agricole et
pnitentiaire de Mettray, douzime annee, Tours 1854.
17
M. 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, 293
296]); on Mettray and other French agrarian colonies, see: Luc Forlevisi, Georges-Franois
Pottier 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 XIX
e
sicle/runies par
Michelle Perrot; dbat avec Michel Foucault (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980).
18
J.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. From
the 1690s to 1850, H. Cunningham and J. Innes (Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York:
St Martins Press, 1998), 130147, 137.
19
Wines, The State.
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Paedagogica Historica 23
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 Dutch
philanthropist 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,
20
the British Revd Sydney Turner, who emphasised the
element of love
21
, 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.
22
Therefore, holiness
remained glimmering on the horizon of these children, and approaching somehow a
level of holiness remained part of the ambition.
23
Foucaults pairing of Surveiller et
punir should be extended to both educate and love if we take seriously the story
presented 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 of
their 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, and
finally risky genotypes.
Risky families: an era of family upheaval in the USA
In 1997, an alarming book, entitled A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of
Family Upheaval, was published by the American sociologists Paul Amato and Alan
20
W. 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 ontdekking
van het onschuldige criminele kind. Bestraffing en opvoeding van criminele kinderen in
jeugdgevangenis en opvoedingsgesticht 18331886 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 7374.
21
Cited in Carpenter, Reformatory Schools, 325327.
22
Cited 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.
23
Other testimonies can be found in Wines, The State of Prisons. Edouard Ducptiaux (1804
1868), the famous Belgian prison reformer, also visited Mettray, see MS. Dupont-Bouchat,
De la prison lcole. Les pnitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIX
e
sicle (18401914)
(Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1996), 4344. Cf. Dekker, Straffen, redden en opvoeden, 204206.
24
See on Foucault and Aris: J.J.H. Dekker and D.M. Lechner, Discipline and Pedagogics in
History. Foucault, Aris, and the History of Panoptical Education. European Legacy 4, no. 5
(1999): 3749.
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Booth.
25
This 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 interviewed
again 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.
26
According 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 to
Amato 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-conflict
marriages 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. According
to 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 of
the history of childhood has developed in the conviction that the history of education
25
P.R. Amato and A. Booth, A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of Family
Upheaval (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
26
F.F. Eddins-Folensbee, A Generation at Risk [Book Review], Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 41, no. 4 (April 200): 486487.
27
Amato and Booth, A Generation at Risk, 215, 221 (quotation), 223, 239.
28
For England, in 2001, Peter Sidebotham et al. tried to identify and validate parental risk
factors for child maltreatment through the famous Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and
Children, ALSPAC. Main parental risk factors were age (mothers of abused children often
being younger than mothers of non-abused children), educational achievement, and long-term
psychiatric illness, but not a history of abuse in childhood, as has been argued by other
authors, 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): 1177
1200: 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 having
been maltreated.
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Paedagogica Historica 25
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.
29
For the
rest, 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 the Battered Child Syndrome by the American medical doctor
Kempe.
30
As 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 educate
their 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 makes
it almost impossible to evaluate historically, in a longitudinal meta-study, the preva-
lence of childrens maltreatment.
31
After 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.
32
In addition, from the end of the
1980s, new international juridical standards came into existence and could be used to
justify 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 the
Rights of the Child is the pre-eminent international philosophical and legal base in
29
In 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.
30
C.H. Kempe, FN. Silverman, B.F. Steele, W. Droegemuller and H.K. Silver, The Battered-
Child Syndrome, Journal of the American Medical Association 181 (1962): 105112. Cf. the
historical overview by H.E.M. Baartman, Opvoeden kan zeer doen. Over oorzaken van
kindermishandeling, hulpverlening en preventie (Utrecht: SWP, 1996).
31
The most recent overviews on child maltreatment in the Netherlands are M.H. van
IJzendoorn 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 landelijk
onderzoek naar de omvang van kindermishandeling onder leerlingen van het voortgezet
onderwijs (The Hague: Ministerie van Justitie [Ministry of Justice / WODC, 2007). See also
H. Baartman, R. Bullens and J. Willems (eds.). Kindermishandeling: de politiek een zorg
(Amsterdam: SWP, 2005).
32
For the institutional practice in the Netherlands from 1972 until the 90s, see M.A.S.
Roelofs, Kindermishandeling en hulpverlening. De aanpak van lichamelijke
kindermishandeling door het Bureau Vertrouwensarts (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1996).
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26 J.J.H. Dekker
regard to childrens human rights.
33
Indeed, 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 sexual
abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the
care of the child. (2) Such protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective
procedures for the establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support for
the 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-strike
intervention 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 justified
by 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 famous
experts on the subject, published his first comprehensive studies in 1979. During his
long academic career, the prevalence of child abuse and neglect grew almost continu-
ously according to his publications.
36
In 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 in
the study year, more than 1 in 4 a property offence, more than 1 in 8 a form of
33
S.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 Neglect
31 (2007): 473477, 473.
34
Quoted by Hart, Reflections, 473474.
35
Hart, Reflections, 475476.
36
D. Finkelhor, Sexually Victimized Children (New York: Free Press), 1979. Idem: Child
Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1984). In 1994, he
supported the statement of Loyd DeMause that while anthropologists have in the past
theorized about the so-called universality of the incest taboo, suggesting the rarity of actual
incest, the real cultural universal has been the presence of widespread incest and child
molestation [and now he quotes L. Demause, The universality of incest, Journal of
Psychohistory 19, 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 Neglect 18, no. 5 (1994): 409417, 413. Cf. on this
subject, with approximately the same figures for women, N. Draijer, Seksuele traumatisering
in de jeugd. Lange termijn gevolgen van seksueel misbruik van meisjes door verwanten
(Amsterdam: Sua, 1990).
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Paedagogica Historica 27
child maltreatment, 1 in 12 a sexual victimization, and more than 1 in 3 had been
a witness to violence or experienced another form of indirect victimization. Only a
minority (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) Sexual
Victimisation, (3) Child Maltreatment, (4) Property Victimisations, and (5) Witnessed
and 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 European
Journal of Criminology, Child Abuse & Neglect, Child Development and Science tell
a story of expansion of child maltreatment.
39
In an article from 2007 in Pediatrics on
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.
40
This 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
37
D. Finkelhor, R. Ormrod, H. Turner and S.L. Hamby, The Victimization of Children and
Youth: A Comprehensive, National Survey. Child Maltreatment 10, no. 1 (2005): 525, 5.
38
On the phenomenon of poly-victimization, cf. D. Finkelhor, R.K. Ormrod, H.A. Turner and
S.L. Hamby, Measuring poly-victimization using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire,
Child Abuse and Neglect 29 (2005): 12971312, based on the same research questionnaire
and the same victimization definitions. It states that twenty-two percent of the children in
this sample had experienced four or more different kinds of victimizations in separate
incidents (what we term poly-victimization) within the previous year. Such poly-victimization
was highly associated with traumatic symptomatology, 1297.
39
See for example K.J. Sternberg, M. E. Lamb, E. Guterman and C. B. Abbott, Effects of
early and later family violence on childrens behavior problems and depression: A
longitudinal, multi-informant perspective, Child Abuse and Neglect 30 (2006): 283306;
H. Sariola and A. Uutela. The prevalence and context of family violence against children in
Finland, 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 child
abuse and neglect, Child Abuse and Neglect 29 (2005): 969984, who conclude that despite
the 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 more
informed public debate about acceptable standards for the treatment of children.
40
J.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 Pediatrics 118, no. 3 (2006): 933942, 933, 934, 940. [H]aving
been 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%).
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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 they
were 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 strongly
disagree. 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 health
and 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 no
longer 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 of
parents 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 eight
neglectful 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
41
E.M, Douglas and M.A. Straus. Assault and Injury of Dating Partners by University
Students in 19 Countries and its Relation to Corporal Punishment Experienced as a Child,
European Journal of Criminology 3, no. 3 (2006): 293318, 293, 302, 303 (Table 3: Corporal
punishment experienced before age 12 (n = 36 university sites), 311, 314.
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Paedagogica Historica 29
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 Leiden
University 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 the
method 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 not
conscious 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 of
the 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
42
M.A. Straus and S.A. Savage, Neglectful Behavior by Parents in the Life History of
University Students in 17 Countries and Its Relation to Violence Against Dating Partners,
Child Maltreatment 10, no. 2 (2005): 124135, 124, 129, 130, 131133, 134; table 2, on the
figures, and table 3, on the definitions. For an earlier study about university students, see
A.M. Berger, J.F. Knutson, J.G. Mehm and K.A. Perkins, The Self-report of Punitive
Childhood Experiences of Young Adults and Adolescents, Child Abuse and Neglect 12
(1988): 251262, 259 and 260, on their university student sample from the Department of
Psychology at the University of Iowa. Although they conclude on the basis of their research
that the endorsement rate from this sample yields a prevalence estimate of physical abuse
close to 9%, they cannot believe that such a relatively low percentage can be true. Because
Gil [the authors refer to the classic study of D.G. Gil, Violence Against Children (Harvard
University Press: Cambridge, 1970), JD] noted that approximately one-third of the abuse
occurs in children less than 3 years old, and because young adults typically do not accurately
recall 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 discrete
disciplinary events rather than asking whether persons had been abused. Most of the persons
in the present study who met the more stringent abuse criterion failed to describe themselves
as having been abused. Even the adjudicated adolescents were unlikely to indicate they were
abused.
43
The Leiden University report, I. Jzendoorn et al. Kindermishandeling, appendix 2 on the
definition of maltreatment; the Free University of Amsterdam report, Lamers-Winkelman
et al., Scholieren Over Mishandeling, 2.
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Thus, the contemporary history of the battered child seems to refute the earlier
proposed hypothesis of diminution of this phenomenon. Professionals are contributing
significantly 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 becoming
increasingly 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 in Exceptional Children, the study of risk factors is part of a relatively
new discipline of developmental psychopathology and is based on the belief that
significant 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 as
defined in a long tradition of systematising child deficiencies before the birth of child
sciences by moralists and pedagogues such as Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (17441811)
in his Krebstbuchlein 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 Alfred
Binet 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 on
how 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 the
study 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 changing
position 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 of
adaptive 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 depressive
symptomatology, 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
44
Dekker, The Will to Change the Child, 3435, 120128.
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Paedagogica Historica 31
responsibility and participant welfare is necessary, for: Incorporating participant
perspectives into our ethical decision making has the potential to contribute to both
the 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.
46
Of
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, interaction
between 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.
48
Thus, 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 other
child 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 the
genotype. 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 the
X 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, Caspi
suggests 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
45
C.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 Development 67 (1996): 20862100: 2086, 2097.
46
J.R. Nelson, S. Stage, K. Kuppong-Hurley, L. Synhorst and M.H. Epstein, Risk Factors
Predictive of the Problem Behavior of Children At Risk for Emotional and Behavioral
Disorders. Exceptional Children 73, no. 3 (2007): 367379, 368.
47
Nelson et al., Risk Factors, 367, 375.
48
Nelson et al, Risk Factors, 368369, 376.
49
A. Caspi et al., Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children,
Science 297 (August 2002): 851854.
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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 for
that 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 parental
power 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, for
parental 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 then
subsequently 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, not
preventing is the responsibility of the state.
51
This idea of children at risk as an
important 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
50
M.-S. Dupont-Bouchat, E. Pierre, J.-M. Fecteau, J. Trpanier, J.-G. Petit, B. Schnapper and
J.J.H. Dekker, Enfance et justice au XIX
e
sicle. Essais dhistoire compare de la protection
de lenfance 18291914, France, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Canada (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 2001).
51
L.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 Ridderzaal
te sGravenhage (Den Haag: Ministerie van Justitie, 1955), 514, 7.
52
J. Overwater, Rede van de voorzitter van de Nationale Federatie De Nederlandse Bond tot
Kinderbescherming, in Toespraken gehouden ter herdenking van de gouden kinderwetten
op 1 december 1955, 1523. Cf. J. Overwater, Kinderrechtspraak en kinderbescherming.
Alphen aan den Rijn: Samsom, 1948.
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Paedagogica Historica 33
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 had
to 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 also
expanding. 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 risk
The 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) Entzauberung or
disenchantment. 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].
53
A 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 the
child, should and could be approached scientifically.
54
This 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 aus movement.
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 proposal
by certain Dutch child scientists, and was accepted eagerly by the Dutch government.
By this I mean the electronic child dossier. This innovation, when introduced, makes
possible prevention and supervision from conception until adulthood. Such a policy of
53
M. Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehere
(582613) [herausgegeben von Johannes Winckelmann, Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul
Siebeck), 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
Sociology 3 (1967): 1219]), 5965.
54
M. Depaepe, Zum Wohl des Kindes? Pdologie, pdagogische Psychologie und
experimentelle Pdagogik in Europa und den USA, 18901940 (Weinheim: Deutscher
Studien Verlag, 1993).
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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 idea
behind 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 private Inventgroep, laid down in the report Helping with growing up and
educating: 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 dossier
should 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 being
authorised 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 Big
Brother, 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
55
Coalition Agreement between the Parliamentary Groups of CDA, PvdA and Christenunie, 7
February 2007, foundation paper for the centre-left or Christian-socialist BalkendeBos
Rouvoet government [Coalitieakkoord tussen de Tweede Kamerfracties van CDA, PvdA en
Christenunie, 7 februari 2007], 30. The minister for Youth and Family Affairs, A. Rouvoet,
member of the orthodox Protestant political party Christenunie, developed these ideas further
in Alle kansen voor alle kinderen. Programma voor jeugd en gezin [All Opportunities for All
Children: Programme for Youth and Family 20072011], the programme sent on 28 June
2007 to the Second Chamber of Parliament.
56
One of the authors of the report mentioned, professor dr. J. Hermanns, was quoted in a
newspaper interview as saying that everybody working with children, both professionally
and 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 over
vroegtijdige 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 or
volunteer, should have access to the electronic dossier].
57
That proposal was laid down in Alle kansen voor alle kinderen.
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Paedagogica Historica 35
from philanthropists and private organisations of childrens homes in countries like
Germany and the Netherlands. Around 2000, with the introduction of the electronic
child 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 eventually
become holy children, the romantic idea of childhood and the idea of childhood at
risk 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 the
phenomenon.
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 the
population 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 that
Century 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 have
functioned 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 the
University of Groningen and president of the Groningen Research School for the Study of
the Humanities. In 1998 and 2005, he was visiting professor at the History and Civilisation
Department 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 visiting
member of the Editorial Board of History of Education. He specialises in the social
and cultural history of education. His publications deal with the history of marginality and
children at risk, philanthropy and education, and the history of childhood and parenting. On
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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 naar
opvoeden. Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds de Gouden Eeuw
tot omstreeks 1900 (2006) (Educational Aspiration: On the Growth of the Pedagogical Space
in the Netherlands from the Golden Age until 1900).
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