Valiant Girls and Vulnerable Boys: The Impact of Gender and Race on Mothers' Caregiving for Chronically Ill Children

Notions of gender are embedded in the social structure and often subtly affect our views and expectations in virtually every area of life. It is only gradually, as a consequence of an emerging scholarship primarily focused on women, that social scientists are coming to appreciate the full significance of gender in the organization of social life. As part of this work, the role of gender is in the provision of home care for chronically ill children has received greater attention. It is now well documented that women perform the majority of health-related home care labor (Breslau, 1983; Glazer, 1990; Zimmerman, 1993) and, if men share, there is a gender division in the types of caregiving work performed (McConachie, 1986). Evidence also suggests that gender affects how parents adjust to and cope with the diagnosis of childhood chronic illness (Powers, Gaudent, Zola, 1966), social class (Kupst & Schulman, 1988), support systems (Barbarin, Hughes, Chesler, 1985), family roles and relationships (Patterson, 1985), and gender expectations (Miles, 1991). …