Health, Handicaps and Family Management

Paper Summary:

The purpose of the study the author has critiqued is to determine whether family composition has a significant impact on the overall health of adolescents suffering from type I diabetes mellitus (DMI). The results of the study suggest that the poor health status of African-American adolescents from single parent families can be attributed to inadequate parental supervision and intervention in enforcing the required health regimen. In addition, the stress of divorces or conflicts between separating parents may have contributed to the poorer metabolic functioning of these adolescents. The author critiques that although the article raises very interesting issues about the health problems of African American adolescents from single parent families, it does not explore the role of ethnicity in undermining their ability to take care of their adolescents. Moreover, the author believes that the article should have further explored how different family types manage their resources and implement plans to deal with their children's illnesses.

From the Paper:

"When the researchers combined the INT and the BLND groups to form the two-parent (TP) group, they found that adolescents from SP families had significantly poorer metabolic functioning than the TP families. Furthermore, African-American adolescents from SP families were in significantly poor metabolic control than their African-American counterparts from TP families and Caucasian counterparts from both SP and TP families. However, the mothers' reports indicated that TP families experienced significantly more problems in family relationships than SP families (Harris et al., 1999, pp. 192-4)."

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