Saving children

Abstract

This chapter explores how brain science and neoliberal ideas infuse and shape the understandings and practices of those working in the early years field. It considers the evangelical mission that they believe guides their work, which is to save children from the perils and consequences of inadequate parenting. It is brain science discourse that provides practitioners with what they regard as the unchallengeable ‘truth’, made visual through brain scans, which justifies their interventions and the ways that they intervene in parenting. Underlying practitioners' enthusiasm about saving children are ideas about optimising both children and mothers, and notions of intergenerational cycles of deprivations that reproduce low attachment and deficit parenting in families and localities.

Social Implications of Weight Bias Internalisation: Parents’ Ultimate Responsibility as Consent, Social Division and Resistance

“…This is a concept used by Mahoney in relation to the notion of individual responsibility for consumption and diet-related health (Mahoney, 2015, p. 47). Gillies et al (2017) argue that the contemporary “child saving” movement in the United Kingdom is the taken-for-granted thing to do, but that it veils the contradictions in the pro-market system according to which children are exposed to harm rather than protected. This perspective does not underplay the right to good health and the flourishing of children, but it points to the contradictions.…”

“…Neoliberal ethics are based on individualism and rational choice in which only personal responsibility matters. So, tensions would be expected with policies that frame responsibility as “collective” or “shared” between the state, the food industry and parents, as it becomes unclear who has and who escapes the burden of caring responsibilities (Tronto, 2013, p. 60; Gillies et al, 2017, p. 67). There is ambiguity about moral responsibility and who has power to take action to protect child health.…”

“…The state is restructured and decentred, so that it operates through multiple sites, including the local state, and through collaboration between actors with different interests. However, although hollowed out, it retains an overarching power (Gillies et al, 2017, pp. 66–69).…”

Social bodies and social justice

“…This return to a focus on ‘vulnerable groups’ and shrinking conception of the social, alongside funding cuts under the Coalition and subsequent Conservative government, have precipitated a reduction in Sure Start provision: 1,000 centres have now closed or provide reduced services (Smith et al , 2018). As austerity politics have taken hold, some practitioners have employed neuroscience to promote their professional interests and contend that early intervention is more cost-effective than remedial action with risky families (Gillies et al , 2017, pp. 79–80).…”

“…79–80). This appeal to a narrow, economic rationale chimes with a neoliberal, responsibilising agenda, ignoring the ‘real-life ambiguities of culture, diversity and difference’ (Gillies et al , 2017, p. 80) that shape our embodied and embedded lives. When read together, the different chapters of the Sure Start story demonstrate how neuroscience may be used for progressive or regressive ends.…”