“Soccer moms” don’t really exist in the Netherlands. Great cycling infrastructure there liberates parents from the task of ferrying their kids everywhere.
“There are few chauffeuring their kids around in SUVs all day,” according to Simon Kuper in his article The Magic of Childhood in the Netherlands, published in the Financial Times this month.
Recalling his childhood in that country, he remembers the autonomy and fun that came from navigating the world on his own on his bike.
“The Dutch built cycling infrastructure that allows kids to get around their neighbourhoods alone, safely,” writes Kuper.
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“I am nine years old and a friend and I are cycling at top speed down our town’s high street, re-enacting the finish of the Tour de France ... Lord knows where our parents were,” he says.
The priority given to safe cycling in the Netherlands liberates kids from their parents, and – dare we say it – parents from their kids.
A recent Unicef report repeats the organisation’s usual finding that Dutch children are the happiest in the rich world, Kuper notes.
In Unicef’s Report Card 19: Child Wellbeing in an Unpredictable World, which analysed child mental wellbeing, physical health and skills in OECD/EU countries from 2018 to 2022, the Netherlands is ranked number one for mental health and fourth for physical health. It outranks Ireland on both counts.
The Netherlands’ impressive scores owe much to the bike, argues Kuper.
“On their bicycles, and in local playgrounds, parks and the country’s profusion of sports clubs, they get exercise,” he says of children growing up there.
Indeed, two-thirds of Dutch kids walk or cycle to school, according to the non-profit Dutch Cycling Embassy.
Some 80 per cent of Dutch teens cycle to school, the park, the shop or a friend’s house at least three days a week. Rates don’t differ between boys and girls, each of whom cycles about 150 minutes a week. Dutch teens cycle an average of 2,000km a year, according to the embassy.
By contrast, the car, at 41 per cent, was the main mode of transport of secondary schoolchildren in Ireland, according to census figures.
Eighteen per cent of Dutch children are overweight. This compares with more than one in four children and adolescents in Ireland, where almost 26 per cent are overweight or obese, according to the same Unicef scorecard.
Exercise correlates with higher life satisfaction, too, according to Unicef.
One in three 15-year-olds here report low life satisfaction
Going around the neighbourhood themselves, Dutch kids learn social skills, says Kuper. Eighty-three per cent say they make friends easily at school, and they report relatively little bullying, a big problem in Britain, he says.
Irish teenagers by contrast are among the least happy in high-income countries, despite leading the world in skills, according to Unicef.
Comparing the wellbeing of children across 43 OECD and EU countries, Ireland ranks first for academic performance, but it falls to 24th for adolescent mental wellbeing – placing it in the bottom half globally.
The findings reveal that nearly one in three 15-year-olds here report low life satisfaction.
“These findings are stark,” says Peter Power, executive director of Unicef Ireland. “Ireland’s teens are succeeding in school, but struggling in life.”
Cycling alone isn’t going to remedy Ireland’s shocking happiness and mental and physical health scores, but the Dutch are getting plenty right, it seems.
The Netherlands ranks only a modest 11th for “skills”, in the Unicef report, Kuper notes. It’s a category in which Ireland ranks first.
But maybe there are more valuable metrics for our children’s wellbeing than “skills”.
Many societies try to optimise for excellence or wealth, says Kuper, but he’s pleased he grew up in a place that chose life satisfaction instead.
