Abstract

LUCCISANO, Lucy  and  WALL, Glenda. La configuración de la maternidad a través de la inversión social en los niños: ejemplos de Canadá y México. Revista Col. San Luis [online]. 2014, vol.4, n.7, pp.180-202. ISSN 2007-8846.

As post-neoliberal scholars have pointed out, social investment targeting risk groups has become the focus of social spending by states in many countries around the world, and children, given their inherent potential, have increasingly become the focus of state investments aimed at enhancing their future integration into the market economy. This chapter details the results of two case studies which examine the regulation of motherhood in very different contexts where neo-liberal techniques target investment in children. In Canada recent campaigns have urged mothers to invest heavily in their children during their early years in order to enhance brain development and future market success. In Mexico, the state-sponsored anti-poverty program aims to increase children's human capital development through the educational system as a way to ensure the future insertion of rural Mexicans into the market economy. The results of in-depth interviews with mothers in southern Ontario and rural Mexico are compared, and while the there are many class-based and cultural differences in the experiences of these mothers, there are also some surprising similarities in terms of the effects of a social investment framework on the regulation of motherhood.

Keywords : Post-neoliberalism; social investment; social regulation; mothering; Canada; Mexico.