Health Care and the Family: A Three-Generational Analysis

While a great deal is known about the health and health care of the population as a whole, little is known about the family as a basic unit of health. Fallowing the work of Reuben Hill & Associates, a three-generational exploratory study of the health and health care of a select group of families living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area was undertaken in 1967-68. Some 210 nuclear families (70 three-generation linkages), all residingwithin a 75 mile radius of the Twin Cities area, were interviewed intensively, five times over the course of a year. Data of both a cross-sectional as well as longitudinal nature were obtained. Although only in its formative stage of analysis, our study has seemed to demonstrate not only the feasibility and value of intergenerational-family analysis to the field of health care but highlight the relatively precarious position of the younger generation vis-à-vis the financial demands of illness and the ill preparedness of their grandparents to cope with their health care problems as well. Finally, our findings tend to lend at least partial support to Parson and Fox's rather pessimistic view of the role of the family in health care, suggesting somewhat greater universality than originally proposed.