The plight of the parent-citizen? Examples of resisting (self-)responsibilisation and stigmatisation by Dutch Muslim parents and organisations during the COVID-19 crisis

This chapter provides a brief and inevitably selective history of Muslim families and organisations in the Netherlands, focusing in particular on the notion of intensive parenting in relation to our studies. Muslims form the largest yet most stigmatised minority group in the Netherlands, making up roughly five per cent of the population. Intensive parenting is described as parenting that is ‘child-centred, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive, and financially expensive’. It is typically oriented towards the nuclear family and encourages parents to think of the family as a project to be managed and of the child as a ‘profitable investment’ that, if endowed with the right education and concerted cultivation by its parents, is moulded into an entrepreneurial self. The online sharing of parental experiences peaked in the first days after the schools closed. The day schedule and the act of sharing it on social media square with intensive parenting discourse.