Sensitive modes of child rearing: an inflection in the process of medicalization of childcare

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.