Abstract
In this paper we analyze the discourses and practices related to sensitive modes of child rearing and their connection to the medicalization of childcare, understood as a process by which non-medical problems have come to be defined and treated as medical problems. “Sensitive modes of child rearing” refer to a heterogeneous group of care practices that has emerged from criticism of the process of medicalization of childhood, particularly of the scientific precepts that govern the exercise of “scientific maternity”, and that is seen by its practitioners as a return to the “natural” and “traditional”. Our study is a reflection based on ethnographic research carried out in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We discuss the main controversies surrounding the two models, such as that concerning the baby’s crying, and argue that the sensitive modes - contrary to what we are led to believe by its practitioners - are closer to certain modern Western values and tributaries of those values originating in Romanticism. In conclusion, we propose that sensitive modes of child rearing, rather than representing a return to the “natural” or a de-medicalization, constitutes a contemporary inflection in the process of the medicalization of childcare.
Keywords:
Body; Emotions; Child Care; Individuation; Medicalization