For the Sake of the Children: The Social Organization of Responsibility in the Hospital and the Home.

• Position: Review

Heimer, Carol A. & Lisa R. Staffen. For the Sake of the Children: The Social Organization of Responsibility in the Hospital and the Home. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; 800-621-2736.

This book examines the social organization of responsibility by asking who takes responsibility for critically ill newborns. Drawing on medical records and interviews with parents and medical staff, the authors take us into two neonatal intensive care units, showing us the traumas of extreme measures and the sufferings of infants. The accounts are by turns...