Starting well: gender, care and health in the family context

In this article we present a critique of a series of public policy documents that aim at improvement in health for the general population, particularly families, but fail to recognize or appreciate the implications of gender for the everyday and the long-term experiences of family members. Drawing upon considerations of gender, families, health, time and space, and previous theoretical work (McKie et al., 2002), we propose the concept of ‘healthscapes’ to aid the analysis and development of public policies. A healthscapes approach allows analysis of health policy within the diverse and multi-dimensional notions of time, space and gender that infuse the lifecourse. We assert that consideration of the gendered and generational project of caring, particularly in relation to the (re)production of health, should involve a reflective inter-play between theory, research and policy.