Adult children settled here go looking for a parent visa and find only vague references to family reunification. The category most people are searching for was abolished years ago, and knowing what replaced it, and what that replacement does not cover, saves a long detour.
Essentially no, and it's worth saying that plainly rather than sending you toward a dead end. There used to be a specific route for this — a policy letting parents over 65 join an adult child here — but it was scrapped years ago, and nothing has replaced it as a standalone category. What's left is the general "verblijf bij familielid" permit, built on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is really a catch-all for people who don't fit the standard spouse/partner/minor-child categories rather than a real parent visa. Part of why: the EU's Family Reunification Directive only makes spouses, partners, and minor children a guaranteed right, and only for sponsors who are themselves non-EU nationals settled in the EU — parents and other relatives are left entirely to each country's discretion, and the Netherlands hasn't built a dedicated optional category for them. For Dutch or EU-citizen sponsors, it's pure case-by-case discretion under human rights law, a genuinely hard bar to clear (more in the next answer). For most families, visits are the realistic path: a Schengen short-stay visa covers 90 days in any 180-day period, and some nationalities can get a multi-entry visa that makes repeat visits easier without raising that cap.