Why Now? AP in a Neoliberal, Postracial Context

Since it was first named in the late 1980s, AP has grown in popularity and has inspired a host of media and public attention. The establishment of organisations such as Attachment Parenting International reflect the global expansion of the philosophy's reach, with forums and support groups in locations such as Brazil, Norway and Turkey. This increased interest in AP is part of a broader intensification of parenting, captured in the ideology of intensive mothering (Hays, 1996; Faircloth, 2013). This chapter considers why AP has emerged at this particular socioeconomic moment, linking AP's heightened popularity to the dominance of neoliberalism in Britain and Canada (and, indeed, the world). Neoliberalism shapes and is shaped by race, especially the role it plays in distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘failing’ citizens, and is inextricably tied to motherhood, which is understood as essential to the production of such citizens. Everything is neoliberal and neoliberalism is everything Neoliberalism is a ‘peculiar form of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms’ (Brown, 2015, p. 17; see also Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee, 2012), centring the market as the organizing principle of all aspects of life (Giroux, 2008). Neoliberal reason redraws the lines of democracy, citizenship and subjectivity and frames them in the terms of the market (Larner, 2000). The economy is the focus in all avenues, with the state's sole purpose conceptualized as the protection and facilitation of economic growth (Brown, 2006, 2015). In such a scenario, governments might champion ostensibly social justice initiatives but only insofar as they contribute to economic growth. Relations between people and their government are similarly structured, with principles of individual responsibility, entrepreneurialism and self-investment taking centre stage (Rose, 1999; Brown, 2015). In a 2016 speech describing his government's approach to poverty alleviation, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron emphasized both the essential role he imagines the family playing in overcoming poverty and the importance of addressing such problems for the purposes of protecting national ‘economic security’ (Cameron, 2016a). The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 2015 Liberal election promises concentrated on ‘investing in the future’ and ‘helping the middle-class’. Economic growth is understood as a taken-for-granted good that can improve the lives of all. The ruling political parties in both Canada and the UK express neoliberal values in the way they centre economic growth in their policy agendas, each choosing different paths to achieve this goal.

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