Abstract

In Chile, social policies are founded on the notion of women as primary caregivers burdened with the main responsibility for others. These policies conceptualise women as deficient, requiring their parenting to be monitored. Drawing from our ethnographic studies of specific instances of encounters with the state, this article examines how low-income mothers navigate, experience and are subjected to silence and silencing. Silences are at the basis of their relationship with a state that provides minimal, almost imperceptible care, compelling these women to manage their silence to obtain even the slightest assistance.