Ethnic Differences in Sex Stereotyping by Mothers: Implications for Health Care

Abstract

Health practitioners are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the role of the social sciences in applied research. Traditional studies of health and human behavior, particularly when they are conducted among non-Western groups that are relatively uninfluenced by biomedical approaches, focus on alternatives to the usual biomedical meanings and implications of disease, illness, and health care. Such studies base their definitions on a community’s own beliefs about illness and health-related practices. The underlying philosophy and techniques of anthropology consider the people being studied to be the specialists in whatever behavior is chosen for observation. In psychiatry (by contrast), it is the professional who is considered the expert specialist (Fabrega and Silver, 1973: 5). It might be said that in much of American psychology it too often appears that proof of a theoretical “concept” is the goal, and neither the observer nor the observed is of much intrinsic interest.