Ombudsman for Children in Finland

Who is responsible for bringing up our children: parents, professionals or the market? Has child-rearing become yet another performance? Child-rearing or coaching? Can children still be brought up by the community? Senior officer Elina Nivala from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children challenges you to think about your own notion of the status of Finnish child-rearing. The debate is to continue at the anniversary seminar.

The task of bringing up children is challenging in many ways. As adults, we often feel at a loss in the midst of the challenges of modern society. Children and young people have a clear need for adult support, but adults may feel that they lack the means to provide it.

Many of us adults find our parenting job and role a difficult one. The idea that bringing up a child is somehow imposing our influence on another person against their will is extremely common. It is seen as suppressing the child's own will, and we think that the process has to involve threats, fear and discipline. What is more, the job of bringing up a child brings with it a huge responsibility. If you accept the right to influence another person by bringing them up, you have to take the same responsibility for the end result, i.e. what that person becomes. Because the end result of this process is always highly uncertain, it feels wiser not to even start in the first place. The job of bringing up a child is a demanding one and that is why many of us deny that this is in fact what we are doing.

The demanding nature of the job of bringing up a child is evinced in a desire to deny the child-rearing role in the context of many traditional parenting tasks. Instead of being seen as the job of raising a child, parenting is seen as the job of being the child's friend or mentor, a role which incorporates ‘ coaching' the child for success in various areas of life. On the other hand, some parents are too exhausted to bear responsibility for bringing up their children and some have possibly abandoned responsibility even for their own lives. Amid the stress of juggling the challenges of combining work and family life, parents may think it is better to leave the demanding job of bringing up children to those who are trained for it, i.e. the professionals.

However, many of these child-rearing professionals deny that this is their job either. Teachers prefer to define themselves as directors of learning, and youth workers are guides only for particular leisure activities. Day care professionals, however, still identify themselves in a child-rearing context. But is it enough for children to be brought up at nursery and can the job of bringing them up be completed there? Or do we need nurseries to be performing this role at all? Should nurseries too be concentrating on coaching and teaching instead?

Certainly there are many adults among us who recognise and take on their responsibility for bringing up children. These parents, teachers, youth workers and other important adults might not make a song and dance about their child-rearing role but they understand that as adults they have a special task in relation to children and young people. This is the job of supporting and guiding growth.

The ideal of managing independently?

Growth, development and learning are built-in processes that we have to go through as humans. As well as growing physically, people also grow mentally and socially, take on influences from their environment, adapt to some models and distance themselves from others, learn information and skills, develop functionally and mentally, and form an image of themselves and the world around them. This growth process is one which cannot be avoided. Our culture, which emphasises individual choice, leads us to think that as adults we are not allowed to restrict this process of growth by steering it in the direction we ourselves desire. It is by thinking along precisely these lines that we assume that bringing up children is somehow imposing our influence on another person against their will. Instead of bringing up our children we should leave all the doors open for children and young people to find their own way. This can be termed liberal parenting but in fact it is not parenting at all but a lack of parenting. By walking away from the job of bringing them up, we are leaving our children and young people to bring themselves up.

The environment in which our children are growing up in modern society is a very demanding one. It is by no means completely devoid of people who have taken on responsibility for child rearing but the job of influencing their upbringing has been taken over by many players who would not primarily be seen in that role. These players, such as the consumer and entertainment industry, try in many ways to influence our behaviour, our thoughts and what we think we need. Children and young people are particularly susceptible to their influence but their activities are mainly steered by interests other than the responsibility of bringing up children. If the people who should be bringing up children walk away from the task, they are leaving children and young people to survive alone and together in the midst of these powerful influences on their development. The ideal of managing independently that prevails in our lives today also extends to child rearing. But who takes on the responsibility when children and young people are being brought up by reality TV, beer adverts or adult entertainment on the internet?

Power and responsibility go hand in hand

Bringing up a child is an activity which aims to influence another person in a very far-reaching way. Therefore, it is never neutral. However, a hands-off approach to child rearing also has its effects, so the choice between bringing up children and abandoning the task is not a neutral one either. Both come with a responsibility for the consequences. Thus a person cannot escape his or her responsibility for bringing up a child by abandoning the task. In addition to responsibility, the job of bringing up children involves power; particularly the power to define the direction and purpose of a child's upbringing. An adult bringing up a child can do so in a way which suppresses the child's own will and puts him or her in the adult's power. However, the adult also has the power to make the upbringing process one which supports the child's will and strengthens his or her ego. In bringing up children, power goes hand in hand with responsibility. The person bringing up the child is responsible to the child for how he or she uses this power, how he or she enables the child and what he or she prevents the child from doing.

The options of the person bringing up a child are thus not only limited to two: a domineering approach based on discipline and violence or a liberal upbringing based on the principle of not bringing up the child at all. Banning disciplinary violence as a child-rearing approach does not mean that the hands-off option is all that is left. Bringing up children is essentially more complicated than that. It should take as its starting point the principles of human value and human rights and seek to fulfil these in the child-rearing relationship. Here both the aims of the child-rearing process and the methods used will be based on the human value of the child and respecting his or her uniqueness.

When the parenting relationship is at its best, both parties develop mutual respect. When the adult respects the child and aims, in bringing up that child, to see the child reach his or her full potential by steering his or her upbringing responsibly, this strengthens the child's respect for and trust in the adult. The job of the adult is thus guided by mediation, care and the humility of recognising one's own inadequacies. Bringing up a child is a constructive relationship between two people in which, at its best, both grow. The adult does not necessarily always have to know better or even understand everything. His or her job is to support the growth processes - helping the child to make choices, strengthening skills and self knowledge as they develop, taking responsibility and granting it, setting boundaries, requiring that these are complied with and forgiving when these are overstepped. Bringing up children is about sharing your life and being there. Every child and young person has a right to this .

Article 18 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that "Parents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child." Under the Convention, a child is anyone under the age of 18. In societies such as Finland, parents are supported in their job of bringing up children by a number of professional groups whose responsibility for child rearing is based on their professional status. In practice they ensure children's rights in line with the subsequent section of the Convention according to which "States Parties shall render appropriate assistance to parents and legal guardians in the performance of their child-rearing responsibilities". Adults thus have a broadly shared responsibility for bringing up children, and children and young people have a right to an upbringing.

Every adult have a part to play

At the 5 ^th anniversary seminar of the Finnish Ombudsman for Children we are examining children's rights to an upbringing and the shared responsibility of adults for bringing them up from the viewpoint of different parenting and child-rearing roles. We will evaluate the Finnish child-rearing concept and question the negative view of the concept of child-rearing and parenting that has gained ground in current debate. We will look for material for developing a new child-rearing culture. The aim is to initiate a longer-term discussion of the needs for change in Finnish child-rearing and parenting culture.

The goal is to build trust and partnership between those involved in bringing up children. Bringing up our children should be seen as task in which we all share. Every adult has a part to play.