Reproducing inequalities

This chapter details the ways in which social divisions and inequalities around gender, social class, race/ethnicity, and poverty are embedded and reproduced through early intervention initiatives, especially those invoking brain science. It shows how mothers are envisioned as a risky environment for their children and their outcomes, and held personally accountable for inculcating a ‘biological resistance to adversity’ in their children, able to act as protective buffers between them and harsh social conditions through practising intensive attachment. Poor working-class and minority-ethnic mothers especially are positioned as the source of individual, social, and national problems, and as the solution to them, and the chapter notes the international spread of such ideas.

The politics of early intervention and evidence

This chapter takes a critical look at assumptions that ‘the wrong type of parenting’ has biological and cultural effects, stunting children's brain development and passing detrimental social values and behaviour down the generations. It draws out assertions about foundational, determinist brain development and attachment in the early years as the basis and rationale for interventions to ‘save’ children from poor parenting, and then subject them to critique. The chapter also explores the history of understandings of children, family and parenting, and the implications for society, and looks at contemporary understanding that poor parenting results in substandard future citizens who are not fit for the economy of today's world.

Case studies of interests at play

This chapter builds on the review of the interests at play in the early intervention field and examines them through case studies of three high-profile initiatives. The first case study focuses on the Wave Trust, a campaigning and policy advocate organisation that has been highly influential politically in promoting brain-based early intervention in the UK. It claims a ‘business centred’ approach to breaking damaging intergenerational family cycles of abuse and violence. The second case study subjects the origins, delivery, and evidence claims of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) early intervention programme to scrutiny. The third case study explores the nodal network position of Parent Infant Partnership UK, which advocates for an emphasis on attachment between primary caregivers and babies.

Rescuing the infant brain

This chapter turns to the latest diagnosis of the problem that early intervention aims to address, focusing on the quality of parenting and infant brain development. It explores how brain claims came to define and propel to the fore early intervention in how mothers bring up their children as a logical expression of social investment models of social policy. The chapter also looks at the use and misuse of developmental neuroscience and of evidence for the early years being formative, to open to question the detail of the five key biologised motifs — critical periods, maternal attunement, synaptic density, cortisol and the prefrontal cortex — that are mobilised to make the case for intervention in the parenting of young, disadvantaged and marginalised mothers.

Citizens of the future1

This chapter explores the history of ideas about intervention in family, highlighting attempts to shape children's upbringing for the sake of the nation's future. A consistent and influential idea has been that undesirable attitudes and actions, and the propensity for deprivation, are transmitted down the generations through the way that parenting shapes children's minds and brains. The chapter considers the relationship between interventions designed to address fears about the state of the nation in the form of poverty, crime, and disorder, and understandings of the role of parents and families as they link to shifting emphasises of the capitalist system across time.

In whose best interests?

This chapter analyses the intricate network of interests and their agendas that characterise social policy provision generally, focusing down on social investment in children's services and the early intervention field. In particular, the chapter looks at three key stakeholder groups with interests in early intervention: business, politicians and professionals, and their interlinked alliances and partnerships. It examines how corporate money, power, and influence have pervaded various children's services, from child protection work to family and early intervention initiatives to education services. This occurs through ‘philanthrocapitalism’ — an amalgam of an economic rationale of early intervention coupled with moral notions of social philanthropy.

Reclaiming the future: alternative visions

This chapter discusses how the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of neuroscience conceal the deeply political and moral nature of decisions about what is best for children. The current early intervention logic is rooted in simplistic notions of cause and effect, with the ends of improved human capital justifying the interventions to ensure its production. The chapter then explores potential future directions, contrasting the ‘brave new world of prevention science’ and its instrumental economic logic, with a socially just approach to increasing family income and reducing material deprivation, and more collectivist ideals of supporting families, reducing social harm, and humanely addressing the social good for its own sake.

Saving children

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.