This article discusses a proposed interconnectedness between the ecologies of ethnic minority families, adaptive strategies, socialization goals, and child behavioral outcomes. The ethnic minority groups included are African American, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian Pacific Americans, and Hispanics. Demographic information on population size, geographic area of concentration, and preferred identity terms is provided. It is argued that adaptive strategies, including extendedness of families and role flexibility, biculturalism, and ancestral worldview, emerge from the ecological challenges of ethnic stratification status. These adaptive strategies foster the child-rearing goals of positive orientation to the ethnic group and socialization for interdependence, which in turn enhance the developmental outcomes of cognitive flexibility and sensitivity to discontinuities among ethnic minority children.

Family Ecologies of Ethnic Minority Children.

Intergenerational support is analyzed using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The authors find evidence that a systematic latent structure of intergenerational exchange characterizes the giving and receiving of support. Overall, one-half of Americans do not routinely engage in giving or receiving relationships with their parents and only about one in 10 are engaged in extensive exchange relationships. Parents are assisted more often in situations of poor health, and more often receive assistance when they have young children. Assistance in time of need is not uniform and is rarely extensive. Intergenerational assistance is constrained by family structure and the needs and resources of each generation. African-Americans are consistently less likely than whites to be involved in intergenerational assistance. In each generation, men receive as much altruistic support as women; higher levels of giving and receiving of aid among American women are due to their greater involvement in exc...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2781826

The Structure of Intergenerational Exchanges in American Families

A selective systematic overview is provided of the literature on the utilization of health and welfare services that appeared in the United States and Europe mainly within the last two decades. Methodological questions that appear to characterize much of the work to date are discussed and analytically distinct approaches or research strategies in the study of utilization behavior are presented. The paper traces the emergence of work in this area questions the wisdom of investigators proceeding along traditional research lines and highlights a number of promising new possibilities for research. (authors)

Some approaches and problems in the study of the use of services--an overview.

Anthropological and socio-medical health care research in developing countries.

The family as a basic unit in health and medical care: A social-behavioral overview

A critique of the argument against the "isolated nuclear family" is presented. Attention is drawn to vital conceptual and methodological flaws in the argument by Sussman et al. against Parsons' position. It is concluded that the case against the isolated nuclear family has yet to be made. Guidelines are put forward for a proper determination of this matter. Empirical data are presented using these guidelines. A study population of 486 disability applicants was questioned about a closed set of 24 kin made up of parents, parents-in-law, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. When the data was standardized for kin availability, it was found that 38 percent of available kin lived in the same city or community, 51 percent of kin were seen at least monthly, and 17 percent provided significant help. The single, divorced, and widowed were found to be more integrated into their external kin network than the married, for whom kin are of relatively low importance. It was concluded that while for nuclear families the household is the basic family system, for the nonmarried it may well be the extended kin network.

Kin Family Network: Overheralded Structure in Past Conceptualizations of Family Functioning

It was hypothesized that among subjects who perceive themselves to be in poor health those with fewer or less urgent symptoms, whose life situation makes it more difficult to seek care, and who lack faith in the medical care system would be most likely to fail to seek medical attention. The hypothesis was tested with a population of applicants for social security disability benefits. The hypothesis was only partially confirmed. Two life situational factors of income and welfare contact, and three measures of system orientation were found to be related to the seeking of medical care but urgency and number of symptoms were not. Subjects with low income, recent welfare contact, and negative system orientations were most likely to fail to seek medical attention. Moreover, negative system orientations proved to be associated with low income and welfare experience suggesting that negative orientations may be created by situational factors and serve as rationalizations for failure to seek care when situational factors make it difficult to do so.

Self perception of sickness and the seeking of medical care.

Disability of the breadwinner has serious consequences for the family. In addition to severe economic problems, such families experience a disruption of roles and strained interpersonal relations. This paper is concerned with the variations in structure of families with a disabled breadwinner. Family types were constructed utilizing age, sex, and marital status of the disabled person in addition to presence and age of children and generational factors as important dimensions. The distribution of a disabled population of breadwinners among these family types is presented. Factors believed to bear an influence upon family structure are introduced: sex, age, race, size of community of residence, and severity of disability. This paper is a step toward bridging the gap in research between theoretical models of family structure and empirical reality.

Geoffrey Gibson

Papers

Kin Family Network: Overheralded Structure in Past Conceptualizations of Family Functioning

Self perception of sickness and the seeking of medical care.

Family Structure in a Disabled Population

Physician attitudes toward the nurse practitioner.