Ellie is professor of family and parenting research at the University of Kent. Her research and teaching draws on sociological concepts such as ‘risk consciousness’ and ‘medicalisation’ to analyse the evolution of family policy and health policy. Her work explores why everyday issues – for example how women feel after abortion or how mothers feed their babies – turn into major preoccupations for policy makers and become heated topics of wider public debate. She is the author of Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health: Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain (Aldine Transaction) and co-author of Parenting Culture Studies (Palgrave). She is the director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies based in SSPSSR and regularly discusses her research in the media and other public forums.