In this chapter we examine the rationale underpinning early years intervention and subject the claimed evidence base to deeper critical scrutiny. Highlighted in particular is the use and misuse of developmental neuroscience as a justificatory framework for family intervention. We explore how brain claims came to define and propel a campaigning movement for early intervention in the UK. We begin by examining how early intervention functions as a logical expression of social investment policy models. As principles of need and mutual obligation have given way to an emphasis on building capacity and managing risk, the minutiae of infant experience has acquired a central significance in policy. This is despite the sparse evidence to support the formative influence of early years parenting.

The quiet revolution: social investment and the ‘Third Way’

When New Labour were swept to power in 1997 social investment policy models were taking hold unobtrusively in a quiet revolution across Europe (Hernerijck, 2015). In the UK social investment became a core component of Tony Blair's ‘Third Way’ politics, articulated as a need to re-direct government expenditure from traditional welfare towards productive policy investment in human capital. Children assumed a new strategic importance as vectors of a sustainable capitalism in which economic growth would remain high while risks became opportunities. The young would be enabled to drive a flexible knowledge-based service economy, while managing their own risks (low pay, precarious contracts, shifting demands for skills).

After the sustained ‘roll back’ of the state engineered by previous Conservative governments, New Labour's social investment model was widely embraced as progressive and egalitarian. In 1999 Tony Blair pledged to eliminate child poverty by 2020, reflecting a conviction that targeting interventions at poor children would secure a more flexible economy in the future (Lister, 2006). This instrumental goal also framed New Labour's broader concern with tackling social exclusion and raising educational attainment. At the centre of this policy rationale was a redefining of parenting as a key determinant of children's future life chances, and as such a legitimate focus for state intervention. This meant cutting across traditional understandings of family life as outside the remit of state involvement in all but extreme circumstances.