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Notions of child health: mothers' accounts of health in their young babies
Author(s) -
Lauritzen Sonja Olin
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9566.1997.tb00412.x
Subject(s) - thriving , child health , developmental psychology , embodied cognition , psychology , sociology of health and illness , medicine , health care , pediatrics , political science , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , psychotherapist
Abstract This paper is concerned with mothers’ understandings of child health in their young babies. To explore how child health is depicted, explained and contextualised by mothers, altogether 29 mothers in Stockholm and London were interviewed through the baby's first months about day‐to‐day experiences of the baby's health and well‐being. The analysis of the mothers’ accounts reveals how the mothers, in the process of assessing health, try to ‘read’ the bodily signs and reactions in their babies. Some major themes emerge on how the mothers identify and characterise threats to the health of the baby; here described as threats of abnormalities, threats to the survival of the baby, threats to the thriving of the baby and threats from illnesses. Notions of child health are discussed in relation to the ‘bodily’ and the ‘social’, and how the embodied images of child health are intertwined with the mothers’ presentations of themselves as responsible for the health of their children and as ‘worthy’ parents.