On the Internet there is said that family is the base in the life of a Dutch person, but in the questionnaire only 14% of the students say that they spend more time with their family than with their friends. 46% say that they equally spread their time between family and friends and 40% say that they spend more time with friends. Also 46% of the students filled in that they do not have the same religion as their parents. So teenagers now start to think by themselves what religion fits them, while earlier in the days, a higher percentage of teenagers would have had the religion of their parents. Also 50% answered that they do not have the same political believes as their parents. Again it shows that teenagers don’t just believe the same things as their parents. Something else that stood out was that 80% doesn’t always do what their parents ask them to do. That is a really high percentage. That’s totally different than we would have expected. Off course we knew that there would be a percentage that doesn’t always do what their parents ask them to do, because it really depends on what situation it is, but we didn’t expect it to be this big. There you can see a really big difference in the youth from now and from 50 years ago. If we had asked students in the 1960’s the same questions, you would probably notice in the answers that they obey their parents much more than the children nowadays. So the statement on the Internet, about family being the base of a Dutch family, isn’t true for a high percentage. You can really see that teenagers start to stand up against their parents more and do the fun things with friends instead of family.
Religion
In the answers on the questionnaire you can clearly see that religion in the Netherlands has really changed. It used to be a very Christian country, but now it mostly consists of people that do not belief in any god. A whopping 66% said that they don’t believe in any god. And only 18% say that they are Christian. Also it plays a much smaller role in their life than before. Only 32% of the students filled in that their religion affects their moral beliefs. So not only lot less people are religious, religion also plays a much smaller role in a Dutch person’s life.
Traditions & beliefs We asked the Dutch students, whether there was arranged marriage in their family and only 2% answered that they’re was. So, as expected, only a very low percentage of the Dutch families have arranged marriage. As wel, 90% filled in no to the question if one person takes all the important decisions. This shows that within a family there is a good communication and people are discussing.