Family and Alternative Care

Cuts to Family Support Services mean that I no longer have transport to take me to see my birth parents and so I see them less often. I miss them.

Kat, English participant in “Austerity Bites: Children’s Voices” project of Council of Europe and the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children

The role of the family

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognises the family as the natural entity that best protects children and provides the conditions for their healthy development. The child is entitled to care, security and an upbringing that respects their personality and individuality. Indeed, Article 3 of the CRC states that the ‘primary consideration’ in all actions concerning children should be the child’s best interests.

Every child has the right to know their parents and to be cared for by them. The CRC assigns responsibility for the child’s well-being to parents and to the state, with states obliged to recognise that the primary responsibility for the child’s upbringing and development rests with the parents. States are required to undertake various positive measures to support parents in performing this duty. Similarly, parents have the main responsibility for ensuring that the child has an adequate standard of living, but if they are unable to do so, states have a responsibility to assist or intervene (Article 27).

Every child who is capable of forming their own views has the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, and their views should be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity. This applies to any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting them, where they have the right to be heard either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law (Article 12). Parents are required to give appropriate direction and guidance to the child, in a manner consistent with their evolving capacities. As the child grows older, they should have an increasingly greater say in personal matters. In conformity with the CRC, parents have an obligation to view the child as a rights-holder, and not merely as their “property” or a “mini adult”.

What is a family?

In addition to the “traditional” family of two parents and their biological children, a number of different family structures have become increasingly common, such as:

multi-generational extended families
single-parent families, where one of the parents is absent, whether through divorce, desertion, death or other reasons
adoptive or foster families
“recomposed” nuclear families, with one natural parent and one step-parent, and any combination of biological and step-siblings
de facto unions, where two people live together without being married
families with same-sex parents
families composed of children and grandparents.

Children should not be discriminated against because of the status of their parents or care-givers, be it their race, colour, gender, religion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability or any other ground. Increasingly, children are likely to experience transitions from one family living arrangement to another, and to end up living with one parent or with step-parents. However, in Europe the “traditional family” prevails; more than half of all married couples in the EU countries have their children living with them.

Irrespective of the type of family structure, both parents have a responsibility to care for and support their children. Most European governments have policies to protect and support the family and parenting needs but they may differ significantly. Many offer paid or unpaid paternity leave as well as maternity leave, and most provide for an additional period of parental leave as well, but the adherence to such schemes, and their provisions, may be very different from one country to another. From a child’s rights perspective, it is consensual that in case of separation or divorce, children have
the right to develop and maintain a relationship with each of the parents and keep contact with other significant adults (such as grandparents and extended family). All parenting responsibilities, including the financial support, need to be shared by the parents to take into consideration the best interests of the child.

Children have the right to be kept outside of parents’ conflicts and not forced to choose one parent over the other. They should participate in making decisions affecting them even in such a situation but they should not make “adult’s decisions” or take any standing they could be blamed for. Children need to be reassured that they are safe and their needs will be provided for.

The right of children to know their origin

It is estimated that more than 8 million children worldwide have been born as a result of assisted reproductive technologies, of which the most common is in vitro fertilisation (IVF), including the use of eggs, sperm or embryos from a known or anonymous donor. It might involve a gestational surrogate, when the embryo (created via IVF using the eggs and sperm of the intended parents or donors) is implanted into a surrogate but the child is genetically unrelated to her. Commercial surrogacy is legal in only few countries in Europe.

Traditionally, most countries used to favour anonymous donation models, and thus restricted the right of donor-conceived people to know their origins. International human rights law has moved towards recognition of a right to know one’s origins. This is not an absolute right and must be balanced
against the interests of the other parties involved: principally those of the donor(s) and the legal parent(s), but also those of clinics and service providers, as well as the interests of society and the obligations of the state.

Nevertheless, donor-conceived children should be informed about the existence of supplementary information on the circumstances of their birth upon their 16th or 18th birthday, and then decide whether they want to access this information.¹

Challenges for families in Europe

Europe is a continent full of diversity, contrasts and inequalities in relation to accessing resources and rights. This is also visible in policies regarding the family, which is historically one of the policy domains most marked by ideological principles. Still, families in Europe face a number of challenges common to the majority of societies.

Working parents

Increasingly both parents tend to be in employment. Long working hours and conflict between work and family responsibilities may present problems – most commonly for women, although not exclusively. Throughout nearly all European countries, women have reported significant difficulties in
combining work and family life, in particular during parenting².

Parents working abroad

It has become a growing phenomenon that people leave their homes to find a job requiring them to be far from their families for a long or repeated period of time. Many parents have to leave their children to their grandparents or other relatives, or place them in boarding schools. These children, left behind by their migrant parents, are extremely vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and neglect.

Single-parent households

Despite declining numbers, marriage continues to be the most common form of family unit for raising children across Europe: almost three quarters (71.2 %) of all families in the EU are composed of married couples. However, there is great variety across the continent, and marriage as a family structure is less common in many northern and western countries than it tends to be in southern and eastern countries. Across the European region, single-parent families represent about 16% of the total, but there is again great diversity across Europe: in some parts of Belfast, for example, the proportion of single-mother families forms as much as 60% of the total; in the Dutch region of Noord-Overijssel, the proportion is only 7.7%. Single-parent families throughout Europe are predominantly single-mother families. In the case where the father fails to pay the child support, it affects women disproportionately and adds to the inequalities that they already face in the workplace, including the pay gap and difficulties in career development. Single-parent families are at particular risk of poverty and child poverty.³

Positive parenting

The Council of Europe, while acknowledging that there are many different ways to raise children, has drawn up a set of general principles that underlie the concept of positive parenting as well as guidelines on how policy makers can support it. The Recommendation on Policy to Support Positive Parenting defines positive parenting as “behaviour based on the best interests of the child that is nurturing, empowering, nonviolent and provides recognition and guidance which involves setting of boundaries to enable the full development of the child”. Accordingly, parents should provide their children with:

Nurture – responding to a child’s need for love, warmth and security
Structure and guidance – providing a child with a sense of security, a predictable routine and necessary boundaries
Recognition – listening to children and valuing them as people in their own right
Empowerment – enhancing a child’s sense of competence and personal control
A non-violent upbringing – excluding all corporal or psychologically demeaning punishment.

Corporal punishment is a violation of children’s right to respect for physical integrity and human dignity.

According to the recommendation, states should support positive parenting through family policy measures that secure appropriate living standards for families with children and prevent child poverty and social exclusion of families with children. Supporting services for parents include local centres and services dispensing information, counselling and training on parenting as well as spaces where parents can go to exchange experiences and learn from one another and play with their children. In order to provide support in crisis situations, helplines should be set up for both parents and children.

Families at risk, such as migrant families, parents and children with disabilities, teenage parents or parents in difficult social and economic circumstances, should receive targeted services.

A fundamental principle of the CRC is the child’s best interest, but who should decide what is best? For example, who should decide whether it is in a child’s best interest not to keep contact with one of the parents?