Children, Health and Well–being: Policy Debates and Lived Experience

Bringing together new and leading scholars in the field of children s health and illness, this book is the first to demonstrate the importance of research with children and research from a child perspective, in order to fully understand the meaning and impact of health and illness in children s lives.

Children, Health and Well–Being addresses three cross–cutting themes; the first theme illustrates the significance and pervasive influence of policy and discourse in shaping understandings of children s lives. The second theme focuses on health policy in action through looking at interactions between professionals, parents and children; the final theme highlights children s role as health care actors, focusing on the lived experience of children. Taken together, the themes encourage critical reflection on contemporary and culturally specific ways of knowing and understanding children s health.

The book furthers theoretical understandings of the sociology of children s health and illness and encourages productive debate amongst a wide audience, including academics, policy makers, and health–care professionals. The collection goes some way to seriously begin the important process of addressing the migration of child health from the margins into mainstream sociology of health and illness.

Geraldine Brady is a Senior Research Fellow at Coventry University. Her research engages with policy and medicalised discourses that shape ideas about children s health and behaviour. She is Co–convenor, with Pam Lowe, of BSA s West Midlands Medical Sociology Group.

Pam Lowe is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University. Her research is centred around women s reproductive health, with a particular interest in pregnancy, contraception and parenting.

Sonja Olin Lauritzen is Professor Emerita of Education at Stockholm University. She has a research interest in health surveillance, the construction of normality and parental understandings of child health. She is the editor of Medical Technologies and the Life World; The Social Construction of Normality (with L–C Hydén, 2007).