Difference and Similarity: How Children’s Competence is Constituted in Illness and Its Treatment

Visibility and Social Representation Traditional perspectives in the study of childhood health and illness emphasize the child as a subject ‘acted upon by others’.1 Most research interests have primarily considered adults’ perspectives (such as mothers’ and professionals’), perhaps including observable assessments of child health or focusing on different external factors and conditions of children’s lives. Such perspectives leave more or less unaddressed the understanding of the child as a social person with their own experiences, perceptions and actions in the social and cultural world.