Professors from the Institute of Social Medicine at UERJ, Laura Lowenkron and Camila Fernandes, published the article “Motherhood amidst reprimands and advice: Parenting and class in Rio de Janeiro,” in Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, published by the American Anthropological Association. Both authors are researchers at the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM) and the Transnational Research Network on Dispossessed, Violated, and Violent Motherhoods (REMA). Access the full published article here.
The article explores how processes of moralizing women mothers in contemporary Brazil reinforce structural inequalities. The analysis focuses on two forms of communication: reprimands and expert advice directed at mothers in two distinct social contexts in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Based on Camila Fernandes’ fieldwork in a favela complex, the first case study examines how poor and racialized women are reprimanded by professionals at public daycare centers. Based on Laura Lowenkron’s ethnographic research in a middle-class parents’ WhatsApp group, the second study focuses on expert parenting advice circulated in the group during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through a comparison between reprimands and advice, the authors suggest that speech acts reveal how expert discourses carry out modes of moralization that not only shape motherhood experiences, but also differentiate them according to class, race, and territory.
The article is part of a special issue of the journal entitled “Contested Parenting. Experts, Audiences, Selves,” organized by Heike Drotbohm and Konstanz N’Guessan as a result of a seminar on the politics of “good parenting” held at the University of Mainz, Germany, in 2022. Drawing on empirical research from different parts of the globe, the dossier addresses the topic of parenting through the intersection of three groups of actors: 1) the parents themselves, who deal with their own imaginations about parenting while facing expectations and role assignments of “ideal types” of person; 2) the experts — professional or self-declared — who represent a central authority on how to observe, comment on, and, if necessary, intervene; 3) the audiences, which include not only (other) parents and experts, but also in-laws, neighbors, children, and any other observing member of an imagined community that seemingly watches and judges whether parenting is being carried out correctly, well, and appropriately. The collection of articles also highlights how gender, race, and class-based inequalities — morally charged — shape not only parental interventions and public policy goals, but also the moral and emotional dimensions of parents’ identity work.
The special issue includes the following articles:
- Drotbohm, Heike & Konstanze N’Guessan. Parenting as contested practice between experts, audiences, and selves. An introduction.
- Heron, Adom Philogene. What Exactly Is a Family Man? Performing and Precluding Respectable Fatherhood in Dominica.
- N’Guessan, Konstanze. Making beautiful babies: Performative parenting, parental determinism, and personhood in Côte d’Ivoire.
- Lowenkron, Laura & Camila Fernandes. Motherhood amidst reprimands and advice: Parenting and class in Rio de Janeiro.
- Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela. Contesting parenting expertise: Constructing good mothering and searching for dignity in Cameroonian Berlin.
- Mai, Nga Thi Thanh & Gabriel Scheidecker. Help can harm. Unintended consequences of child protection and parenting support for Vietnamese immigrant families in Germany.
- Hannaford, Dinah. Aid workers parenting in the field: Children-as-audience and the generational transmission of privilege in Senegal.
- Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. Disrupting the social by centering the self: Life coaching and the politics of marriage, motherhood, and adult sociability among Latinx and Latin American women.
- Fonseca, Claudia. Contested parenting and affective economies. A commentary.
Access the complete dossier.