Making beautiful babies: Performative parenting, parental determinism, and personhood in Côte d'Ivoire

Abstract

According to the notion of “parental determinism,” parents are paradoxically imagined as both powerful actors and in need of expert guidance and supervision. Subsequent research in different world regions problematizes the links between parental competence, child development, and societal ills. However, the question of what “good parenting” actually consists of is highly contingent. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Ivorian parents and in a child welfare center, this paper examines competitive comparisons in baby shows, pregnancy consultations, and infant health reviews as performative parenting encounters in which parents, social welfare officers, and midwives interact as actors and audiences of “good parenting.” The paper analyzes contemporary parental determinism in Côte d'Ivoire as at once rooted in well-established local imaginaries of self and personhood and opening spaces for the development of aspirational parental selves. It looks at different ways in which parental determinism is enacted and talked about and how “doing good” as a parent and the well-being of children are grasped as entangled and mutually constitutive. The paper demonstrates that “beautiful babies” are a product of a shared understanding and co-practice. Making “beautiful babies” requires communal efforts to “be good” and “do good,” invoking the subjectivities of both parents and experts alongside their acts of parenting and counseling.