Medicalization as Professional Process: Postwar Trends in Pediatrics

Abstract

In the late 1950s American pediatricians began to place increased emphasis on psychosocial and behavioral issues in medical training and research. An intraprofessional movement for psychosocial pediatrics led to alterations in the specialty's stated jurisdiction. One explanation for the movement's origins is that demand for treating sick children was eroding; primary-care providers took up the delivery of behavioral services to avoid extinction. This paper shows that routinization of work, not market decline, preceded psychosocial pediatrics. Academicians rather than community practitioners spearheaded boundary expansion. The movement's major consequence appears to be a new division of labor between pediatricians and other health care professionals rather than increased pediatric treatment of children's psychosocial disorders.