Abstract
While parents have long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to infant brain development, drawing on brain scans and neuroscientific knowledge. Sometimes called ‘brain-based parenting’, this has been criticised from within sociological and policy circles alike. However, the engagement of parents themselves with neuroscientific concepts is far less researched. Drawing on 22 interviews with parents/carers of children (mostly aged 0–7) living in Scotland, this article examines how they account for their (non-)use of concepts and understandings relating to neuroscience. Three normative tropes were salient: information about children’s processing speed, evidence about deprived Romanian orphans in the 1990s, and ideas relating to whether or not children should ‘self-settle’ when falling asleep. We interrogate how parents reflexively weigh and judge such understandings and ideas. In some cases, neuroscientific knowledge was enrolled by parents in ways that supported biologically reductionist models of childhood agency. This reductionism commonly had generative effects, enjoining new care practices and producing particular parent and infant subjectivities. Notably, parents do not uncritically adopt or accept (sometimes reductionist) neurobiological and/or psychological knowledge; rather, they reflect on whether and when it is applicable to and relevant for raising their children. Thus, our respondents draw on everyday epistemologies of parenting to negotiate brain-based understandings of infant development and behaviour, and invest meaning in these in ways that cannot be fully anticipated (or appreciated) within straightforward celebrations or critiques of the content of parenting programmes drawing on neuropsychological ideas.
Highlights
While parents have since long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to the development of infant brains (Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish, 2015a, 2015b; Macvarish, Lee, and Lowe, 2014; Pickersgill, 2014)
One way in which this discussion can be kept open is to examine how lay people understand themselves and their social and somatic worlds. It is in this spirit that we investigate how subjectivities come to be produced through particular practices, and analyse what this means for wider understandings of being human
We knew neuroscience was discussed in these courses, and that most of the respondents we would recruited would, in principle, be able to talk about the import of understandings and ideas grounded in neuroscientific concepts and findings for their parenting practices
Summary
While parents have since long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to the development of infant brains (Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish, 2015a, 2015b; Macvarish, Lee, and Lowe, 2014; Pickersgill, 2014). Emerging from the US in the early 1990s (Macvarish, Lee, and Lowe, 2014), these ideas about children’s brain development – known as ‘brain-based parenting’ (Hughes and Baylin, 2012) – are related to, and exacerbated by, what some refer to as a culture of ‘intensive motherhood’ or ‘intensive parenting’ Sociological literature on this issue has argued that in such discourses on intensive parenting, parents (and mothers) are seen as almost exclusively responsible for how their children grow up (see, for example, Bell, McNaughton, and Salmon, 2009; Lee, 2008; Lupton, 2011; Romagnoli and Wall, 2012; Thornton, 2011; Wall, 2010). Scientised notions of parenting have circulated widely, with a range of UK policy documents discussing children’s (brain) development and often mentioning the adverse consequences of suboptimal parenting (Broer and Pickersgill, 2015b; Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish, 2015a, 2015b)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
