This article is focused on concepts of agency in relation to unborn and newly born babies in a Zambian community. Through an exploration of local perceptions of unborn and newly born babies’ spirituality and personhood, as well as their developing bodies, I problematize dominating theoretical definitions of children’s agency. The article calls for more relational assessments of children’s agencies that not only focus on children as independent social actors in their own right but also integrate experiences of dependency and vulnerability.

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In Ng'ombe Township in Lusaka, the death of a baby is often met with silence. Based on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how the bereaved mother's silence is guided by wider cultural norms and values associated with death, by complex notions of what it means to be a person, and by local perceptions of mental health and well‐being. To enhance the complexity of the mother's silences, it also explores how structures of poverty manifest in mothers’ experiences of loss and how silence may hold feelings of inadequacy but also of care and compassion. Finally, the article aims to provide a counterweight to the predominant assumption that mothers in poor communities, who experience high levels of infant mortality, fail to mourn the death of their babies, as well as to psychological theories that assumes verbal expressions as vital for the mourner's mental recovery after loss.

Infancy is characterized by physical and biological changes and growth, and across cultures, parents associate this period with care, protection, and nutrition. However, beyond the universal aspects of infancy, the ways in which caretakers understand babies' needs and nature are subject to great cultural variation.In this article I explore how people in a township in Lusaka, Zambia, conceptualize and understand how babies become social persons. Particular attention is paid to how human potentials are seen to naturally grow and unfold if properly cultivated in the relationships that the child shares with others. I will also discuss how local models of natural growth contrast models of early child development offered by international parenting intervention programs that focus on how parents in poor communities can stimulate young children's cognitive development.

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