This two-year study traced and critiqued the recent adoption by UK policy-makers of the idea that ‘new brain research’ offers new ways of understanding how parents ought to raise their children. Since the late 1990s, ‘brain claims’ have entered parenting discourse in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. ‘Brain claims’ tend to emphasise the extreme vulnerability of the infant brain to the influence of parents, thereby raising the stakes of parenting, including by presenting the period of pregnancy as ‘critical’ for future outcomes. Issues like the mood of the mother have, for this reason, become the subjects of greater policy attention, on the ground that the fetal brain is ‘wired’ in response to maternal emotion.
Neuroscience has, on this basis and others, been appropriated by policy advocates to argue for early intervention into parent-child relationships in the name of preventing social problems. The project entails an analysis of family-related social and public health policy documents since 1998, a review of existing literature critical of the development of ‘brain claims’ in family policy in the UK and elsewhere, and a review of historical literature to contextualise current trends within a longer history of efforts to ‘save’ children from their parents.
Further details here: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/early-intervention/current-projects/