Diabetes-by-Proxy: Virtual Embodiment of Disease by Oklahoma Choctaw Parents of Children with Type 1 Diabetes

Inter-embodied parental vigilance; the case of child food allergy

There is developing interest in issues of embodiment in studies of children, health and illness. We take our point of departure in the parent-child-health/illness triad to explore the embodied aspects of parental vigilance in parenting children who have a food allergy, utilizing the concept of inter-embodiment. Drawing on a focus group study with parents in Sweden the analysis reveals that this vigilance can be seen as the embodied manifestation of concern for children's bodies in perpetual liminality, when constantly exposed to allergens and the risk of becoming ill. We argue that the lens of inter-embodiment, with a focus on bodies in relation, captures how parents lived experience of managing food allergy intertwines with that of their children in the parent-child-health/illness triad. The analysis uncovers a form of embodied knowledge that is often not verbalized, offering potential for new understandings of parent-child relations that center on chronic child health conditions.

Epistemologies of Living With and Treating Rare Metabolic Disorders

Treatment of a child diagnosed with an inherited metabolic disease is a demanding task both for the clinicians and for the parents. The metabolic pediatricians and dietitians have to deal with scarce and dispersed clinical knowledge, while the parents must actively participate in its treatment, the bulk of which consists of a stringent diet and managing the risk of metabolic decompensation or intoxication. In this article, I characterize the medical epistemologies of a particular kind of "metabolic living," discussing differences and similarities between the clinical/expert knowledge of metabolic specialists, and the lay knowledge of parents of affected children.