Love, Neuro-Parenting and Autism: from Individual to Collective Responsibility towards Parents and Children

That parents should love their children is generally considered self-evident. But what this love should entail is still a topic of discussion. In this paper, we demonstrate that there is currently a trend towards biologizing and even neurologizing parental love - that is, the claim that loving parental relationships are required for the brain development of the child - and that this trend has important repercussions for how we conceive of responsibility for children. Parental love, we will argue, is increasingly being conceptualized in reductionist biological and neurological terms. For example, parenting experts often stress the importance of loving parental relationships for the healthy brain development of the child. Moreover, this trend affects mothers and fathers differently. We will demonstrate this by, firstly, looking into the brain-based parenting discourse in general and secondly, by reviewing the discussion surrounding the diagnosis of autism in particular. We will use the arguments of Jan Macvarish regarding neuro-parenting to demonstrate that parental love is increasingly thought of in reductionist biological and neurological terms. Here, we will discuss three issues. Firstly, we will look at how the neuro-parenting discourse primarily focuses on mothers and their responsibilities. Secondly, we will show how the current discourse on parental love defers child-raising to the realm of individual rather than collective responsibility. Thirdly, we will analyse the discourse on the biological effects of love insofar as it suggests that parents have a duty to love, since their attachment and commitment are deemed biologically necessary for the child’s healthy development. Later on, we use our own qualitative research on how clinicians and parents experience a child’s autism diagnosis to further demonstrate the complex relationship between neuro-discourse and responsibility. When parents are confronted with a diagnosis of autism in their child, seeking the advice of experts in neurodevelopmental disorders is seen as the obvious path for developing their parental love. The neurodevelopmental diagnosis of autism has an exculpatory effect that might be necessary to safeguard parental love, as it relieves parents of some of the responsibility they feel for the child’s challenging behavior. We will demonstrate that parents are considered to have a duty to know a child’s neurological status and a responsibility to act upon this status. Finally, we will point out the relevance of gender for autism and neuro-parenting. We conclude that research into the biology of parental love is a worthwhile endeavor, but that such work requires a less simplistic view of biology than is currently the case. In the current climate regarding the parents’ (and specifically mothers’) duty to love their children in a particular way, we will make a case in this paper for liberating both mothers and fathers from fixed parental roles. We will conclude by arguing for more collective responsibility to lovingly raise children.

Jaar van publicatie:2018

Toegankelijkheid:Open