When my sister, her husband and their four-month-old daughter moved from New Jersey to the Netherlands in March of 2022, I wasn’t expecting our family to receive a lesson in Dutch parenting. But, after spending time at their former home on Bloemgracht, a street and canal in the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam, I learned a lot about the Dutch parenting pedagogy: namely, allowing children to be free and independent—even when it means permitting them to bike in the rain. Yet underneath this conscious parenting philosophy, I observed that, while Dutch parenting may indeed be impressive, it’s the Dutch social safety net that permits parents to feel safe and secure enough to allow their children this broad freedom and independence.
Social safety net
Visiting my sister’s 1600s-era apartment one summer, I meet her Dutch neighbors Daan and Annamarie and their two children, Louie, 7, and Morris, 10. As my partner, Mike, and I sit on the bench in front of my sister’s home, we watch as Louie and Morris chase each other up and down the street, barefoot and dodging Bakfiets—the human-powered cargo bike that all the “cool” Dutch parents have—and run back and forth across the bridge over the Bloemgracht canal.