Mothers and children without day-care centers in Manaus: acceptance of the denial to the right or resistance to the process of colonization?

Abstract

This article intends to problematize the situation of women and 0-3-year-old children in the city of Manaus in regard to the right to a day-care center, whose data released by the City Hall in 2014 reveal the existence of 10 day-care centers for a population of 128,939 children aging between zero and three years old (IBGE/2010). The analysis of these data leads us to think about the situation of women, mothers of 0-3-year-old children, who work in the “Industrial Pole of Manaus” and, above all, about the tiny young child, excluded from the right to the first stage of Basic Education. On the other hand, reflecting on what we call the exclusion of children from the right to a day-care center, we observe that a great part of these women possess identity traits of the indigenous culture, with notions of both parental work and organization that are very different from a society marked by colonizing ideals. Thus, in the quest for understanding the situation lived by these women, we wonder: Could these notions that comprise the situation lived in Manaus justify the non-claim for the children’s right to a day-care center? Is it the case that the mothers from Manaus will not fight for a day-care center for their children because they believe that the day-care center somehow kills people’s origins, imposing a westernized, colonized, white and urban education?