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Motherhood in Western Europe

Insights from Western European Mothers

The changing face of motherhood — Western Europe

The accompanying reports combine a review of existing literature with an analysis of original quantitative data derived from a poll of 9,582 mothers from 12 countries in Western Europe, making it one of the largest studies of this kind ever conducted

Child Obesity and Health

An analysis of the latest available data from the Health Survey for England (HSE)

Child Obesity and Health — download the full report in pdf format

In this ‘National Childhood Obesity Week’, the SIRC report, Children, obesity and heath: Recent trends, holds up a true mirror, accurately reflecting the trend towards slimmer, healthier children. more

The Future of Freemasonry

An examination of the role of Freemasonry in the 21st century

Freemasonry

This report is, as far as we know, an account of the first ever study that has been commissioned by Freemasons from a non-Masonic body. None of the SIRC members involved in the project are Freemasons, a fact that evoked surprise and welcome in equal measure from the Lodge members we met. more

The Changing Face of Motherhood

Insights from three generations of mothers

Motherhood

The report seeks to answer some specific questions about the changing face of motherhood and determine the extent to which modern ‘solutions’ to motherhood are more or less beneficial than the solutions of the past. more

Anniversary of the guillotine

April 25th 2000. On this day in 1792 Dr Guillotin's much-improved device for executing people was first used in Paris to remove the head of a highwayman. Six years later, in the year of the French Revolution, the same man was to become the head of the very first government public health department. It was clearly no coincidence that the dominant ideology of this time was that coercion in matters of diet and lifestyle were the keys to ensuring the universal health and eventual compliance of the French people, even though dictatorship, and the much extended use of the guillotine, would initially be required to begin such a radical and mechanistic process.

All that, of course, was long ago in history and such approaches to the issue of 'governmentality' in health could never gain credence now, could they?