title: Domestic experiments: familial regimes of coping with childhood asthma in New Zealand.
abstract: In this article, I examine the self-positioning of many New Zealand mothers of children with asthma as parent-experts whose authority supersedes that of implementing the self-management strategies advocated by medical professionals. In a socio-political context that emphasizes neoliberal values of autonomy and self-responsibility, these parent-experts experiment with a variety of pharmaceutical regimes, determining familial modes of care that privilege the achievement of what they consider to be 'normal childhoods.' While some families accept asthma as a chronic condition and encourage children to adopt standardized, daily preventative regimes, others craft alternative strategies of pharmaceutical use that allow them to experientially maintain asthma as a sporadic and temporary, if frequent and sometimes dramatic, interruption of everyday life. Childhood asthma care practices are thus not only vested in kinship networks, but often arise out of familial-based experiments whose goal is to determine regimes that enable the preservation of 'normality.'
authors.affiliation: a Department of Anthropology , The University of Auckland , Auckland , New Zealand.
authors.forename: Susanna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Trnka
mesh_terms: D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D001249:Asthma / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000628:therapy*; D005190:Family; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D055118:Medication Adherence; D009035:Mothers; D009520:New Zealand; D012648:Self Care / Q000379:methods*; D012944:Social Support
keywords: family relations; neoliberalism; pharmaceutical use; responsibilization; self-management