Early Child Development Policy: The Colonization of the World’s Childrearing Practices?

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, World Bank investment in Early Childhood Development (ECD) programmes has risen dramatically: from US$126 million in 1990, to US$1.6 billion in 2006 (The World Bank Group, 2011a). The (relatively) recent emphasis on developing ‘human capital’ by the World Bank heralds a move beyond traditional brute neoliberal agendas of welfare cuts and structural adjustment; and ‘investing in children’ constitutes a critical component of the paradigmatic shift towards ‘social investment’ (Mahon, 2010). Investment in early childhood in particular has been emphasized as key to success within this paradigm, and dominant transnational discourses present ECD as being a powerful equalizing tool for Global economies, constituting ‘the most powerful investment a country can make, with returns over the life-course many times the amount of the original investment’ (Irwin, Siddiqui and Hertzman, 2007: 5). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Save the Children have all been instrumental in the worldwide promotion of this particularly Northern construction of childhood, the adoption of which it is believed will act as a ‘powerful equaliser’ (Irwin, Siddiqui and Hertzman, 2007) for global market economies.KeywordsExclusive BreastfeedParenting SkillEarly Childhood DevelopmentWorld Bank GroupMillennium Cohort StudyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.