Pulled between contradictory expectations: Norwegian mother/child service and the ‘new’ public health discourse

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Abstract
In public health discourses in Western societies from the late 1970s onwards, redistribution of power from health professionals to individuals has been defined as a key strategy to foster what is called ‘healthy citizens’. The idea of changing the power relations between ‘experts’ and ‘non-experts’ by ‘empowering’ the latter, however, has not been problematized within the ‘new’ public health literature to any real extent. The present paper focuses on the mother/child service in Norway, and the discussion touches on some of the challenges and tensions that arise when the rhetoric of such notions as ‘empowerment’ is put into practice. This study indicates that the ‘new’ public health discourse is not in harmony with the problematic everyday life of the health service. The analysis is based on qualitative data drawn from interviews with public health nurses.