ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the experiences of feeding children outside the home within the context of feeding programmes at child centres serving children under six years old in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with staff and observations in kitchens and at parent meetings. Drawing on surveillance as a conceptual framework, we argue that these Bolivian child centre food programmes are a form of the state’s disciplinary power. In this system, administrators are instructed to increase or decrease the weight of children based on the results of medical monitoring of the children’s bodies. In state-supported child centres, discipline transfers to the mothers in the form of “communal work” between the government, child centre staff, and mothers. The programme’s staff manages mothers by imposing expectations on them, declaring moral judgments of success and failure, and displaying an overall mistrust of mothers’ feeding practices. Furthermore, the state programmes rely on the unpaid work of the mothers who are already experiencing the heavy burdens of financial and time poverty. The result is that a system meant to improve the nutritional status of children of low-income families may contribute to rising trends in obesity; and programmes meant to support working women rely on women’s work.
