Childrenʼs Health Care and the Changing Role of Women

Women's Labor Force Activity and Responsibilities for Disabled Dependents: A Study of Families with Disabled Children

“…This results from the children's greater dependence on others for self-care and mobility, the time parents must spend in obtaining medical and related services and in-home therapy, and -the limited availability of substitute child care for disabled children. Such increased childcare demands would tend to inhibit maternal employment because they constitute additional nonmarket work in the home, and because of powerful cultural norms that assign to women the principal responsibility for the care of sick family members (Carpenter, 1980;Lewis and Lewis, 1977). At the same time, however, there are other consequences of child disability that may have an opposite effect.…”

Maternal responsibility for health in the household

“…Overall, women provide nearly 95% of all domestic care (Pizurki et al, 1987). Research documents women's disproportionate involvement in the care of the elderly (Boaz & Muller, 1990;Stone et al, 1987); in the care of their husbands (Gannik, 1990;Verbrugge, 1989); and in the care of children, both well (Barnett & Baruch, 1987;Michelson, 1990) and ill (Antonucci & Davies, 1980;Carpenter, 1980). Women's experiences and responsibilities in households, formerly the missing link in quantitative estimates of domestic health work, are central to an emerging theoretical framework, the household production of health (HHPH) framework.…”

Factors influencing the utilization of health care by children

“…Preston has commented that it was about 1960 that the conjugal family began to divest itself of the care of children. In 1960 only 5.3 percent of children were born out of wedlock; in 1980 18.4 percent of children were born (23). Over this same time period another trend begins to affect the family.…”