Lay voices on allergic conditions in children: parents' narratives and the negotiation of a diagnosis

Allergic conditions can be seen as an increasing as well as debated health problem in Western societies, but lay notions and experiences of these conditions are still not fully understood. As much attention is given to prevention of allergic conditions in early childhood, for example as medical advice to parents of young children, it is of particular interest to look at lay understandings of allergic conditions in childhood. This study, carried out in Sweden, explores understandings of child allergy, drawing on interviews with parents of children under 6 years, in a period when the children are medically assessed. The interviews are analysed as illness narratives, with a focus on how the parents explain the child's illness. The analysis reveals a complex pattern. The parents on the one hand refer to a shared knowledge about causes to allergic conditions, such as factors in the physical environment, family life-style and genetic causes. On the other hand, this knowledge is re-appropriated and intertwined with the parents' own experiences of allergic conditions in the process of making sense of the illness in their own child. In their stories, the parents link a potential allergic condition in the child to their own identities as allergic or non-allergic persons and to their family illness history. Child allergy is in this sense constructed as a "family condition".