Parenting, redress, remediation: Critical thoughts on violence and “nurturing care”

The Nurturing Care Framework recognises infants’ embeddedness in broader networks. However, given gender norms and socio-structural features, key actors responsible for child well-being may misrecognise complex care dynamics and reinscribe parental (usually maternal) responsibility. The paper offers a South African example, tracing the emergence of ‘parenting’ as a remedy for colonial violence and its enduring social and affective infrastructures. Close assessment of several research trials for parenting interventions that seek to prevent violence raises questions about the methodological and conceptual assumptions that produce the evidence base. I argue that, given gender norms and the devastating and enduring effects of the colonial-apartheid shaping of family life, women are made responsible for inculcating the values presumed to reduce violence. Despite the potential of a culturally responsive idea of nurture, the Framework prioritises ‘universalist’ ideas about development, bypassing local ontologies and missing the opportunity to materialise a fully redressive model of social well-being.