The spoon and “good care”: Rethinking infants’ rights in early childhood education
Background: Everyday care practices are central to the early years, particularly in infant settings where children communicate through what Mozère (2007, p. 256) termed “whispering languages”. Despite its centrality, care in early childhood education is increasingly blurred and marginalised, often overshadowed by regulatory and educational imperatives. Following calls to re-centre care within early childhood education (Ailwood, 2020; Arndt & Tesar, 2019), this study explores care as a reflective, intellectual, and ethical practice.
Aim: This presentation explores how feeding practices in infant-toddler settings reveal broader micropolitical tensions surrounding professionalism, inclusion, and “good care” in Australian early childhood education. It examines how culturally sustaining care can support infants’ rights, identities, relationalities, and ways of being.
Method/approach: Drawing on qualitative data from my PhD research, this presentation focuses on a conversation with Vishnu*, a Nepalese research participant reflecting on feeding practices with infants in a long day care (LDC) setting in Sydney. The broader study received approval from the relevant university Human Research Ethics Committee. This was a qualitative study that employed a DeleuzoGuattarian framework, utilising semi-structured interviews and a focus group. * Pseudonym
Results/findings: Within the infant-toddler room, spoon-feeding was tacitly positioned as the “correct” and professional approach associated with hygiene and developmental appropriateness. Over time, the participant began to internalise these expectations, contrasting them with eating by hand, which she associated with messiness and backwardness. Simultaneously, she also described hand-eating within her Hindu tradition as spiritually and relationally significant.
Conclusion: Feeding practices emerge not as neutral routines, but as micropolitical encounters shaped by power relations and competing understandings of care. Attending carefully to these everyday moments enables a rethinking of infants’ rights beyond protection and participation, towards culturally sustaining care that recognises diverse identities, relationalities, and ways of being.
Implications for children and families: Infants and families have the right to care practices that listen respectfully to their preferences, identities, and cultural ways of being within early childhood education settings.
Implications for practitioners: Practitioners need guidance to reflect on how everyday care practices and dominant understandings of “good care” may shape inclusion, professionalism, and daily interactions with infants. Are children being heard?
Funding: My PhD was funded by an Australian RTP scholarship.
Keywords: children’s rights, infant, care, culturally sustaining care, feeding, professionalism, inclusion, diversity
This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: