Representing infancy across the world: does Osama bin Laden love his children?

Abstract

Over 90 % of infants are born in the world live in low-income countries, but most scholarly knowledge about infancy is produced in wealthy countries. We therefore need far more information on infancy throughout the world. There are logistical and cultural difficulties associated with gaining this information, but in this article we focus on the broader ideological context of knowledge production about infancy world-wide. Using a recently published volume, "A world of babies: imagined childcare guides for seven societies" as an exemplar, we show that the representation of infancy as an ideology-free or even romanticized zone may do little to forward our understanding of infancy and culture.