Autism, Parent-Blaming and False ‘Cures’ Once again the mainstream autism field risks blaming parents for the cause of autism. This time, through studies often funded by relative-led organisations. The “refrigerator mother” hypothesis blamed supposedly cold parenting for autism. Some of...
Raising Children on the Inside I’ve spent a lot of my time in prison this summer, playing with babies and chatting with their mums. There are six prison mother and baby units in the UK, and they are all different....
Attention to children’s brain development in the early years has been at the centre of English social policy since the late 1990s, and is linked to recent efforts to ‘improve people’s life chances’. Children’s food policy has been influenced by...
The Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel demonstrated that kittens deprived of sensory input in one eye at birth remained permanently blind in that eye. The story of a blind kitten certainly tugs at the heart strings, but...
Picture perfect pregnancy Since the days when a pregnant Demi Moore posed proudly on the front cover of Vanity Fair, the media has bombarded us with images of what pregnancy should look like. Magazine covers display images of glowing women...
Early intervention (EI) is greatly concerned with the idea of ‘life chances’. This is the ‘good’ that EI seeks to provide for its citizens, and a fair distribution of life chances for children during the early years is seen as...
Excerpt from the paper given at the Newton Fund Research Links workshop, held in Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia from August 28th to September 2nd 2016, and funded by the British Council. The value of ethnography for early intervention Over the past...
How does spending the early years in prison impact upon a child’s life chances? And what are the alternatives? Prison Reform and the UK Government A sad but true fact is that last year there were 100 babies in our...
