Performing Parenthood: Implications for Inequality in Healthcare

• In Event: 511 - Section on Social Psychology Paper Session. Ethnographic Contributions to Social Psychology

Abstract

This paper analyzes ethnographic data drawn from interviews and medical observations with 18 families of seriously ill children who received care at an elite university research hospital. About half of these children underwent bone marrow or cord blood derived stem-cell transplantation to cure or slow disease progression. Data also come from interviews with physicians on this unit, and fieldwork at the nearby Ronald McDonald House (RMH) where families stayed during children’s treatment. Combining literature from family and medical sociology with a social psychological perspective on identity work, I argue that parent’s efforts to signify that they were “good” parents during this moment of crisis in family life had important implications for interactions with healthcare practitioners and other service-providers who sometimes interpreted these performances in ways parents did not intend. I also show how these different performances of parenthood shaped parents’ abilities to develop relationships with other parents on the unit or at the RMH, potentially limiting their access to information and emotional support. These findings highlight the important role that identity performances can play in the reproduction of inequality in medical settings.

Author

• Amanda Marie Gengler, Wake Forest University