Issue number 73 of the journal Horizontes Antropológicos has just been published, featuring a dossier on parenting, care, and public policies. The dossier includes articles by researchers affiliated with CLAM.
The article “Motherhood and the pandemic in the popular classes: the relationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary in childcare experiences during the closure of public daycare centers in Rio de Janeiro,” authored by researcher Leticia Hastenreiter and professor Laura Lowenkron (CLAM/IMS/UERJ), analyzes the impacts of the prolonged closures of public daycare centers during the Covid-19 pandemic for mothers from the popular classes, especially Black women living in favelas. The research analyzes how these women experienced motherhood in a context marked by care overload, the precarization of daily life, and the interruption and, consequently, absence of supporting public policies.
The investigation was conducted in 2023, based on informal conversations, a roundtable discussion at a public daycare center located in a favela in Rio’s North Zone, and interviews with mothers whose children were enrolled in the institution before the pandemic. The material reveals how the closure of daycare centers intensified structural inequalities already present in the daily lives of these families.
The study dialogues with the concepts of coloniality of care and stratified reproduction from an intersectional perspective, highlighting how the intersections of the variables gender, race, class, and territory can produce diverse experiences of motherhood.
The research contributes to the public debate on care policies, early childhood education, and social justice, reinforcing the urgency of thinking about daycare as a right for children and women, especially in contexts of vulnerability.
This study was carried out within the scope of Leticia Hastenreiter’s academic master’s degree in the Graduate Program in Collective Health at the Hésio Cordeiro Institute of Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro (IMS/UERJ), and the project “Gender, family, and State: government of childhood, pandemic, and the management of school (non)reopening in Rio de Janeiro” by Laura Lowenkron (Jovem Cientista do Nosso Estado/FAPERJ), affiliated with the same institution.
Access the full article here.
Article reference: HASTENREITER, Letícia; LOWENKRON, Laura. Maternidade e pandemia nas classes populares: a relação entre o ordinário e o extraordinário nas experiências de cuidado de crianças durante o fechamento das creches públicas no Rio de Janeiro. Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, v. 31, n. 73, Sept./Dec. 2025.
The article “Shared bodies, controlled affections: constitution of kinship and parenting in the experience of surrogacy in Brazil,” authored by Aureliano Lopes da Silva Junior (UFRRJ), Mônica Fortuna Pontes (UERJ), and Anna Paula Uziel (CLAM/IP/UERJ), analyzes how parenting and kinship are constructed in contexts of surrogacy in Brazil—a practice still undergoing regulation in the country and mediated by family and social ties.
The research adopts a socio-anthropological perspective and articulates debates from the field of reproductive biotechnologies with interviews conducted with women who voluntarily gestated for others. The goal was to understand how bodies, affections, and social relations participate in the production of family bonds in this type of experience.
Among the main axes analyzed are the centrality of the surrogate’s body in building bonds with the child she gestated, the relationships established between the surrogate and the family she gestated for, and the ties created between the child and the surrogate’s own children.
The results indicate that, within the limits permitted by Brazilian regulations, the relationships built during pregnancy frequently extend beyond gestation and childbirth. These bonds are managed in different ways over time, allowing for various arrangements among the people participating in these family dynamics.
By highlighting the complexity of the relationships of affection, kinship, and parenting involved in surrogacy, the study contributes to broadening the public debate on new family configurations, showing that they cannot be understood solely through legal or biomedical norms, but also through lived experiences and affective arrangements built in everyday life.
Access the full article here.
Article reference: SILVA JUNIOR, Aureliano Lopes da; PONTES, Mônica Fortuna; UZIEL, Anna Paula. Corpos partilhados, afetos controlados: constituição do parentesco e da parentalidade na experiência da gestação de substituição no Brasil. Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, v. 31, n. 73, Sept./Dec. 2025.