Knowledge forms and gendered moralities in policies of infant care in Brazil

Inspired by the anthropology of social policy, this article explores the labyrinth of knowledge forms, politics and morality through which a certain programme for early childhood development (ECD) has unfolded in Brazil. By tracking the materiality of ideas – the actors who defend them, the experiments that back them, and the institutional vectors that assure them legitimacy – I weave together variegated threads from neuroscientists, BBC documentaries and Brazilian politicians to moralised motherhoods, criminal brains and, finally, a surprising appraisal on the diminished cognitive capacity of a whole population. Nurtured in the critical analyses of intensive parenting and correlated discussions on ‘chaotic concepts’, I hope to seize on the Brazilian experience to incorporate a new variable into the cost-benefit equation often used to favour ECD – that of the moral fall-out concerning visions of gender, family and class.