In case you didn’t open this link in the previous post, David Kristofferson recommends this article that explains why Dutch children are the “happiest in the world.”
Here are three of the six reasons:
1. Babies get more sleep.
2. Kids spend more time with both parents.
3. Kids feel less pressure to excel in school.
To read the author’s explanations and to learn about the other three reasons, open the link.
Here is a 2018 listing of the happiest children and countries in the world.
The Netherlands is still first.
According to the rankings, Dutch kids’ education, their material well-being and behaviors and risks were the best in the world. Their happiness is attributed to a non-competitive, low-stress school culture and a good work-life balance for parents, among other reasons.
Finland is number 4.
Finland was fourth overall but No. 2 in material well-being and No. 4 in education for children. Recently, it was named the happiest country on Earth. What gives? Among other things, their taxation system has narrowed, if not eliminated, a lot of disparity between the rich and poor. And children’s services, including education, child care and health, are well-funded. Men and women are, in general, equal. What’s not to be happy about?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“2. . Kids spend more time with both parents.”
That’s not a parenting decision, that’s an economic factor. Most American parents couldn’t just decide to spend more time with their kids because they have to work full time and we get a measly 12 weeks parental leave (not necessarily paid).
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And parents are working so many jobs just to keep a roof over their families’ heads that they are not home. My students deal with that problem a lot.
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Amsterdam is also the marijuana capitol of the world, which might have something to do with their happiness — and hippiness.
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Ya think the children smoke weed?
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Perhaps not, but the parents do and happy parents make for happy children
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Too bad Melinda Gates can’t read and is ignorant of correlations.
She believes gender equality operates in a vacuum unrelated to
national income disparity between the rich and poor.
Which school was she first in class at?
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Melinda Gates, William Barr and Rudy Giuliani learned early at schools affiliated with the same religion- forgiveness is for everybody for all things- just ask for absolution after the fact. It’s not a very comforting doctrine for the people or nation harmed by them who wished they’ld make the right decisions before they act.
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Many European countries are much more family oriented than our country. They also have more social safety nets including family leaves and affordable childcare. In America without support to help working families, parenting is stressful especially for those with limited incomes. In watching ‘International House Hunters’ for many years, one of the main reasons young families opt to move to Europe is for a better quality of life and a better work-life balance. Parents mention having more family time as one of the reasons they accepted an overseas position. These more family friendly attitudes exist in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
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retired teacher
On the scale of religiosity, aren’t the nations you identify, low?
Evidently, those countries interpret family values as something more than people forced into incubation of fetuses that they aren’t ready to care for after egg delivery. There’s no assistance after the fact but, lots of punishment for the mothers and fathers for being ill-equipped to provide for the children that powerful people made them have.
America’s religious who are politically advantaged, scheme for a U.S. like Ireland from which its people had to escape to avoid starvation.
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Although all these countries identify as mostly Christian, particularly Lutheran, they have a lower level of practicing their religion than in the US.
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I was fortunate enough to live in Uithoorn, Holland. I visited the schools while living in Holland. What a difference. One question I asked was, “What is required to be a school head?” The response was consistent and the words were exactly the same response: “Well, one must be an excellent classroom teacher, of course.” Being a school head is NOT for a lifetime. The teachers from a school select their own school head from among the teachers. All school heads also TEACH.
Another example of how Holland values family time. The Americans working were stunned that the Dutch aerospace engineers started closing up their work so they could leave work at 5:00 pm. The Americans asked, “Where are you going? There’s still work to do.” The Dutch simply said, “It’s time for us to go home to be with OUR FAMILIES.”
I like the Dutch. I loved living in Holland, where everything is “people” size and NO HUGE MEGA shopping centers. I never felt crowded, because the Dutch know how to design spaces for people to live.
retired teacher, “YES, there are more family friendly attitudes in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.”
Husbands even bring their wives or significant other FLOWERS every Friday, too. The American women were happy their husbands brought them flowers on Friday like the Dutch men did. When returned to the USA, NO MORE flowers from spouses. What a difference in culture.
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Sounds like 1950’s USA.
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People from advanced nations have little interest in immigration to the U.S. Those moving here are almost exclusively from nations with greater economic and physical insecurity.
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The ditch also love border walls — to keep the foreign invasion (of water) out.
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Dutch not ditch
I have yet to write a single sentence that was not changed by selfcorrect.
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You were fortunate to have had this experience in Holland. It gives you perspective.
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Yes, retired teacher, that experience was simply fabulous.
The students learn a minimum of 3 languages, too … Dutch, English, and another language. It was simply wonderful to watch the Dutch speak the language of the people they people who do not speak Dutch.
I was impressed.
Another insight:
When the Dutch people started to live on boathouses on the canal, because of the housing crunch, it was illegal. So the Dutch made it LEGAL to live on the canals and brought electricity and sewage to those boathouses.
How enlightened! Love the Dutch.
When I lived in Holland, I didn’t see ROAD RAGE.
Because Holland is flat and there are bike paths integrated with automobiles, ALL students ride their bikes to school.
I was living In Holland when the school year started and what I saw were children and teen riding their bikes to school. I SMILED and said to myself, “YAY!” The Dutch do not have an OBESITY problem like here in America.
Another Dutch thing I noticed:
Commercials on TV were all put at the end of a TV show. WOW! The Dutch are sensible people.
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There’s no road rage when most people can ride a bike. Being a small country, nobody commutes the long distances as in the US.
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I’m no expert, but it seems to me the best way to raise happy children is to be happy parents. And a good way to be happy parents is to not be under constant anxiety about money.
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The political networks of the billionaires aren’t striving for happy slaves. They evidently prefer peasants with pitchforks and revolutionaries with guillotines. In the interim the plan is the tried and true go-to method of control, authoritarian religions.
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100% correct. Teaching has become so challenging in the U.S., not just because of high stakes tests and charters draining funds already plagued by austerity, but mainly because the quality of life for the families of students has descended so low. Too much of the population is living with trauma. It’s not just that children are unhappy; they are under life shortening, mentally debilitating stress. They lash out because they have been taking the lashes of poverty. I believe that soon, people will lash out at the rich and powerful instead of each other.
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Hm, one more try:
They just don’t stress much about stuff: hetero, bi, or gay, light narcotics, kids drinking beer, outdoor peeing places… They don’t stress about business either, “rugged individualism” is distinctly NOT a feature appreciated in the Netherlands. So they just go with the flow. Check out the series Rita, it is on Netflix. Granted, it is Danish, not Dutch, still the cultural mores are more alike than different. Of course, this is TV not a documentary, still you’d be surprised what is considered normal or at least acceptable in a “school movie” in Europe compared to the U.S. I liked their school building, which is a real one, not a film set: wide corridors, large windows, lots of light inside the classrooms. Also, I think their pluralistic way of life correlates with their multiparty system, something that the U.S. lacks.
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“Rugged individualism” can be interpreted in a broader cultural context than your monolithic view.The choice of people in a developed nation to ride bikes instead of lounging in gas-guzzling, environment-damaging cars could be seen as example of rugged individualism. The Netherlanders certainly look more rugged than Joe Sixpack (references excess beer consumption).
BA, were you referring to American predation seen in the ruling class, which is entirely different than rugged individualism?
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