ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that trying to adapt adult conceptual frameworks and nursing theories to children is not only problematic and nonsensical, but also damaging to children. To understand, however, why children's nursing did not develop its own theories, we need to understand first the historical background to how children's nursing developed as a separate aspect of nursing, particularly in the UK. Family-centred care is more of a philosophy of care than a theory. Family-centred care viewed as a meme has been phenomenally successful. Thus family-centred care, while it professes to be a central tenet of children's nursing, is in the main concerned with adults' involvement as nurses and as parents in delivering care, or addressing parents' health and or social problems. It also that the healthcare of our children should be evidence based and we should understand the cultural, political and social context in which that care is produced, reproduced, designed, delivered and evaluated.
