Biologising parenting: neuroscience discourse, English social and public health policy and understandings of the child

Lowe, Pam; Lee, Ellie J.; Macvarish, Jan

doi:10.1002/9781119069522.ch3

Cited by 8 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This in turn supports increased state surveillance of, and intervention in, the lives low‐income mothers and children (Lowe et al . , Romagnoli and Wall ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Not only is this understanding of parent/child relationships not respectful of children's own agency and capabilities (Caputo ; Lowe et al . ), but the intensive and instrumental nature of this imagined relationship allows less permission for parents to simply ‘be’ with their children; to interact with them without an explicit purpose or goal in mind.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than a two-way relationship between active participants what is imagined here is a one-way relationship with parents enacting calculated interventions upon children (Edwards and Gillies 2011;Hoffman 2009Hoffman , 2010. Not only is this understanding of parent/child relationships not respectful of children's own agency and capabilities (Caputo 2007;Lowe et al 2015), but the intensive and instrumental nature of this imagined relationship allows less permission for parents to simply 'be' with their children; to interact with them without an explicit purpose or goal in mind.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contemporary parenting advice literature and education which is based on a normative understanding of intensive child‐centred parenting, has been increasingly dominated over the last two and a half decades by a focus on the importance of optimal brain development in young children (Lowe et al . , Macvarish et al . , Thornton , Wall , Wastell and White ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contemporary parenting advice literature and education which is based on a normative understanding of intensive child-centred parenting, has been increasingly dominated over the last two and a half decades by a focus on the importance of optimal brain development in young children (Lowe et al 2015, Thornton 2011, Wall 2010, Wastell and White 2012. Good parenthood in western societies is currently understood to encompass a concerted parental focus on maximising children's brain potential through early and intensive parental attention and stimulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

‘Love builds brains’: representations of attachment and children's brain development in parenting education material

Wall

2017

Sociology Health & Illness

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A focus on early brain development has come to dominate expert child rearing advice over the past two decades. Recent scholars have noted a reinvigoration of the concept of attachment in this advice and changes in the ways that attachment is framed and understood. The extent to which the concept of attachment is drawn on, the way it is framed, and the consequences for mothers, families and parent-child relationships is examined through a discursive analysis of a current Canadian parental education campaign. Findings support the argument that attachment is receiving a great deal of attention in brain-based parenting education programmes as children's emotional development becomes increasingly prioritized. Attachment is presented as needing to be actively and continually built through expert-guided empathetic and responsive parental behaviour, and is framed as crucial for the development of brain pathways that promote emotional strength and self-regulation in children. Attachment-building is also presented as requiring highly intensive parenting that falls overwhelmingly to mothers. The parent-child relationship that is envisioned is one that is instrumental, lacking in affect and conducive to the creation of ideal self-regulating neo-liberal citizens.

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“…This in turn supports increased state surveillance of, and intervention in, the lives low‐income mothers and children (Lowe et al . , Romagnoli and Wall ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

‘Love builds brains’: representations of attachment and children's brain development in parenting education material

Wall

2017

Sociology Health & Illness

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‘I’m his safe space’: Mothers’ Experiences of Physical Violence From Their Neurodivergent Children—Gender, Conflict and the Ethics of Care

Holt

2023

The British Journal of Criminology

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Drawing on recent criminological scholarship on child to parent violence (CPV), this article applies a feminist ‘ethics of care’ framework to understand how mothers of neurodivergent children understand the violence they experience from them. Examining data from in-depth interviews with 15 mothers who experience CPV, this article explores how mothers construct themselves as a ‘safe space’ through which their child can manage their distress. The tensions and emotional conflicts this produces for mothers, as well as the harms that result, are highlighted. Discussion focusses on the usefulness of understanding family violence from an ‘ethics of care’ framework, and the implications for violence prevention through broader social change.

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Messengers of stress: Towards a cortisol sociology

Roberts

McWade

2021

Sociology Health & Illness

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In 2008, Timmermans and Haas called for a ‘sociology of disease’ to develop and challenge the sociology of health and illness. A sociology of disease, they argued, would take seriously the biological and physiological processes of disease in theorising health and illness. Building on two decades of Science and Technology Studies and feminist work on biological actors such as hormones and genes, we propose a ‘cortisol sociology’ to push further at this argument. As a ‘messenger of stress’, cortisol is key to understanding human and non‐human health as a biosocial phenomenon. We argue that sociologists should engage with cortisol through critical yet open‐minded reading of the relevant science and critical triangulation studies, and by tracking cortisol’s movements from science into public worlds of biosensing and self‐monitoring.

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Biologising parenting: neuroscience discourse, English social and public health policy and understandings of the child

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

‘Love builds brains’: representations of attachment and children's brain development in parenting education material

‘Love builds brains’: representations of attachment and children's brain development in parenting education material

‘I’m his safe space’: Mothers’ Experiences of Physical Violence From Their Neurodivergent Children—Gender, Conflict and the Ethics of Care

Messengers of stress: Towards a cortisol sociology

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