A moral pedagogy of the Family as public policy: the Familias Fortes program from the federal government to municipalities

Abstract

Since the beginning of Jair Bolsonaro's government in Brazil, the "family" has become a priority subject of public policies, as part of a political tactic to ensure antigender policies in the political arenas linked to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights and its National Family Secretariat. One of its main policies if the Famílias Fortes program, which bets on parenting education as a tool to solve social problems. This research analyzes the implementation of such program in different Sao Paulo municipalities, and it's organized in two main axis: (i) mapping the Brazilian elaboration of such program and its parenting education content, once the program was originally created and sold by an NGO from the United States; (ii) an analysis of the municipalities' adhesion to it and the role of municipalities' agents in such process, which enables reflection on how such federal policy is adopted and/or modified through it. The main research hypothesis is that, in this case, there is a specific project in dispute, regarding what the State and what public policy should be as a whole - since it seems to transfer social problems' solutions to the individual and moral sphere of social life, erasing inequalities (especially, but not only, gender related ones). The research invests in mixed methods as its key tool, including documental analysis, prosopographical comparisons, ethnographic interviews, and secondary statistical data.