Joiner Flourishing Principles

JFP Blog 1 Introduction 

What if science could tell us how best to flourish? And what if nurturing our infants was the most efficient pathway to facilitating a flourishing state in humans, but this knowledge was not readily available remaining largely within inaccessible university and research domains? The consequence is that parents are left wondering how best to nurture their infants and, without the information they need, to make uninformed decisions about their infant’s care.

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My goal has been to share with the public the critical knowledge about infants and infancy that I have encountered through my university studies. This science can help us understand the critical importance of the first three years, what infants need from us, and what childcare research can tell us about making educated decisions about how best to care for them. It can also direct us to require governments to make better funding decisions, for the sake of future generations.

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Outcome: JFP Principle 1

There appear to be two major challenges facing parents and infants in the West. First, although parents are children’s first and most influential teachers, they are not routinely provided with the knowledge and support they need to understand and respond to infants’ developmental and relational needs. Second, parents are spending less time with their infants as participation in long-day childcare increases. This raises important questions about the implications for infants who spend increasing amounts of time away from their primary attachment figures, and what these changing patterns of care may mean for the next generation and for society more broadly.

We also need to examine why childcare has become a primary mechanism for supporting women’s autonomy and family economic security, and to consider whether current approaches adequately address the needs of infants, women, and men.

JFP Blog 2 Nurturing

In this blog I investigate and report on infant neuroscientific research which details the most important positive nurturing practices and their consequences.

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Outcome: Flourishing Principle 2

The ways in which infants are nurtured have profound effects on their brain development and whether they establish long-term positive or negative social and emotional pathways.

JFP Blog 3 Mothers & Fathers

In this blog I build on the neuroscientific data outlined in JFP Blog 2 including further research investigating both mother’s and father’s nurturing capacities; adding another dimension to the dilemma for women looking to return to the workforce soon after the birth of their babies.

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Outcome: JFP Principle 3

There are good reasons for mothers to spend a larger proportion of time with their infants in the first year, than fathers, as mothers have greater sensitivity to infant cues and thus can deliver more attuned early nurturing than fathers. In addition, the benefits of breastfeeding cannot be overstated and is more successful when infants have close proximity to their mothers. This does not diminish the importance of the father’s/partner’s role, however. Research also shows that fathers have a greater capacity to engage in arousing play with their infants in the second year of life, thought to be critical to aggression regulation. 

JFP Blog 4 Childcare

Investigating research which outlines measurable high stress levels in infants attending long-day childcare and amalgamating it with nurturing data, builds a picture of concern.

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Outcome: JFP Principle 4

Childcare may not be the cure-all we thought it was for women’s autonomy and a family’s economic security, as research reveals that infants in long-day care frequently experience high stress levels that may have long-term negative impacts.

JFP Blog 5 Obligations to Children

In the previous blogs, research and discussion revealed that childcare may have negative consequences for some infants. It is useful here to stop to examine what our obligations are to infants.

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​Outcome - JFP Principle 5

We have significant obligations to care for children and infants in ways that place their long-term wellbeing at the forefront of our considerations. Given their profound vulnerability, dependence, and limited capacity to voice their needs, their interests warrant particular weight in decisions that shape their lives.

JFP Blog 6 Obligations to Ourselves

To continue with our ethical investigations, we also need to ask what obligations we have to ourselves as parents.

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​Outcome - JFP Principle 6

We do have obligations to ourselves: our wellbeing matters, and we have a legitimate responsibility to construct lives in which our own flourishing is valued and protected. However, these obligations cannot be pursued at the expense of our children’s wellbeing, particularly given their profound vulnerability and dependence on us.

JFP Blog 7 Love

So far during our investigations into attachment theory, infant neuroscience, and the ethics of parenting, the word love is largely absent. In this blog, I turn to ask why this important word is so underused, and if it really matters?

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Outcome:  JFP Principle 7

Love is both the fire that ignites a parent’s desire to care and the essential experience through which infants come to feel secure, valued, and a sense of belonging. For infants to thrive, love must be communicated through the everyday ways parents respond, relate, and attend to them. Parents therefore need to understand not only how to feel love for their infant, but how to express and convey that love in ways their infant can experience and understand.

JFP Blog 8 Flourishing

If our long-term aim in raising infants is to enable them to flourish as individuals, we need to identify the markers of flourishing and understand how these relate to infancy.​

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Outcome: JFP Principle 8

To flourish is to develop the personal capacities and attributes that enable us to live fulfilling, meaningful, and connected lives. The close relationship between these qualities and having experienced secure attachment in infancy, highlights the importance of understanding how early relationships contribute to our capacity to flourish across the lifespan.

JFP Blog 9 Liberalism

In this blog, I turn to the first of two foundational societal influences (the other feminism), that have influenced our acceptance of childcare without much questioning. In this blog I dissect liberalist thinking and look at how it has influenced individual expectations. This provides some insight as to why childcare has been chosen to facilitate women’s autonomy. So, what are, and how have, the principles of liberalism affected us?

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​Outcome – JFP Principle 9

The influence of liberal ideas, with their emphasis on individualism, autonomy, and self-sufficiency, have contributed to a shift away from parenting as a socially supported and collaborative endeavour, toward an expectation of individual self-reliance and greater dependence on the external care of infants.

JFP Blog 10 Capitalism

While not viewed by philosophers as an aspect of liberalism, capitalism has expanded and developed unchecked, and with it, the even greater elevation of individualistic liberalist ideals.

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​Outcome – JFP Principle 10

We have been seduced into thinking consuming and wealth creation will bring happiness, yet evidence shows focusing on wealth creation fosters greed and alienates us from each other, which has measurable reductions in wellbeing, and happiness. At the same time, it is unchecked production and consumption, that in part, is leading to climate change.

JFP Blog 11 Feminism

Here, we investigate how feminism has influenced women’s views of themselves and their autonomy, particularly in relation to motherhood and decisions about childcare.

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Outcome - JFP Principle 11

While feminism has brought many significant and positive changes to women’s lives, sameness-based feminism came to overshadow ‘difference feminism’. In privileging women’s capacity to ‘do as men did’, this approach risked positioning traditionally female roles as less valuable or less compatible with equality. In doing so, insufficient attention has been given to the implications of these changes for the care of infants, and to the value, meaning, and social recognition of motherhood.

JFP Blog 12 Motherhood

How has motherhood been viewed in the past and how has this influenced the way we see and experience motherhood now?

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​Outcome - JFP Principle 12

Over the past 70 years, motherhood has not only received limited social recognition and respect but has at times been portrayed as an adherence to traditional patriarchal roles and as incompatible with ambition and achievement. Society needs to recognise and restore the value and significance of motherhood, including the profound contribution that nurturing and raising the next generation makes to the wellbeing of individuals and society. Without flourishing individuals, society itself cannot flourish. Women should therefore feel respected, valued, and supported if they choose to step away from paid employment for a period of their lives to undertake full-time parenting during their infants’ early years.

JFP Blog 13 Impediments to Motherhood

While motherhood was discussed in Principle 12, the associated practical problems to do with career, money, and education are yet to be addressed.

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​Outcome - JFP Principle 13

There remain significant structural barriers to carrying out maternal work and until understood and acknowledged by governments and fundamental supports provided, such as wages, superannuation, and educational support, then we will continue to make maternal work difficult to undertake, undermining the wellbeing of families.

JFP Blog 14 Impediments to Motherhood -
Psychological

When moving from a place of work with comradery, respect, and status to a place of isolation with none of these, is it any wonder many women experience shock and uncertain periods when taking on maternal work?

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​Outcome - JFP Principle 14

For women who have previously experienced the social interactions of the workplace, and many other benefits, the transition to full-time motherhood with its negative connotations, social isolation and a profound shift in identity and daily life routines, very often have negative impacts on mental wellbeing. Mothers of young infants need companionship, care, and practical support within their communities, whilst undertaking this vital role.

JFP Blog 15 Moral Theory

Can a review of moral theory along with some research covered so far lead us to a less perplexed position on maternal work?

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Outcome - JFP Principle 15

A review of ethical theory is useful here because, historically, the family was largely excluded from philosophical consideration, having been relegated to the ‘private realm’ and therefore regarded as outside the remit of ethical theory. However, as we have come to recognise the profound influence of family relationships on human flourishing, there is a strong case for understanding the family as foundational to ethical theory. Drawing on the synthesis of the research examined throughout this work, I propose a reworking of the ‘ethics of care’ into an ‘ethic of social, emotional, and moral wellbeing’. This reworked ethical framework enables us to understand ourselves and our families through a holistic, interdependent lens, while also recognising the significance and value of maternal work.

JFP Blog 16 Family

How can an ethic of social, emotional, and moral wellbeing help families navigate the competing demands of individual autonomy, parental wellbeing, and children’s developmental needs, while recognising that the flourishing of each family member is deeply interconnected with that of the others?

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Outcome - JFP Principle 16

An ethic of social, emotional and moral wellbeing provides a framework for moving beyond an either/or choice between the wellbeing of parents and that of children. Instead, it asks how family life, social structures, and systems of care can be organised to support the social, emotional, and moral wellbeing of all family members, while giving particular consideration to the vulnerability and developmental needs of infants and young children.

JFP Blog 17 Government & Community

An exploration of previous blogs have strongly suggested that families, communities, and governments need to take on the perspective of an ethic of social, emotional and moral wellbeing in order to appropriately support citizens.

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Outcome - JFP Principle 17

Children are every community’s future citizens. Communities and governments therefore have a shared responsibility to ensure that infants receive the conditions and supports they need to develop into flourishing persons. This requires parents to have access to the educational, financial, and community resources necessary to nurture their children to the best of their ability. Governments must therefore ensure that families are adequately supported and that community-based organisations and spaces are appropriately resourced to fulfil their role in strengthening families. It is within communities that families develop the relationships, connections, and sense of belonging that sustain them in the places where they live.

JFP Blog 18 Where to from here...

We have seen there are problems associated with where governments currently place emphasis. We have also seen that there is an ethical issue that has seemingly polarised women’s need for financial independence and autonomy against the needs of her infant. At the same time women’s roles and their biological make up have been underrated, undervalued, and dismissed.

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Outcome - JFP Principle 18

Given the profound importance of attachment relationships to children’s later wellbeing, governments should reconsider how childcare is funded and explore policies that give families greater choice and flexibility to spend time together during early development. Such policies can support mothers’ autonomy without placing it in conflict with the needs of their infants. By adopting an ethic of social, emotional and moral wellbeing, governments could recognise the importance of adequately funding the social and economic structures that enable families to spend more time with their infants during this critical period of life.