Prima barn, helt u.a. : Normalisering och utvecklingstänkande i svensk barnhälsovård 1923-2007

Sammanfattning: This dissertation examines the developmental controls of Swedish children; primarily of four-year-olds. The aim is to show how these controls have constituted children as normal or deviant, and on what epistemological and social bases this ordering has taken place. The history of the child development control demonstrates how certain children have been identified and addressed as in need of special support. Therefore this study departs from extant works theoretically through examining who owns the privilege of assigning definitions.As in many other contexts, ideas about development and normality are vital in child health care. In this study, these themes have been analysed in relation to the establishment and maintenance of child health care as well as to general historical processes. That the responsibility for children’s development shifted from charity organisations to become a public societal issue was part of a larger national and welfare state establishment. One inherent aim of this process was to craft conditions for a functional and strong population on norms built on the middle classes’ generic setup and work ethic. Notwithstanding today’s different language, the empirical findings of the study indicate that children’s health issues are still part of a general process of national construction and that Swedish middle-class standards on children and parenthood still provide cultural models.The empirical sources of the study are mainly documents from 1923-2007. It concerns child health care directives, annual reports, educational materials, articles, official reports and audits, 1000 systematically chosen child health care journals, interviews with child health care nurses and paediatricians and a small amount of observed and filmed four-year-old controls.