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Dr. Mom
Jacqueline Litt focuses her efforts on mothering practices and medicalized
motherhood.
- Tradition, heritage, even popular culture indicates that the primary medical
caregiver in American families has always been the mother.
One commercial even refers to the mother as Dr. Mom.
Jacquelyn Litt, associate professor of sociology and associate director
of women's studies, has long been fascinated with feminist sociology, women’s
studies, motherhood and medical sociology. Much of her scholarship focuses
on mothers’ care giving practices in relation to systems of expertise.
So it shouldn't be surprising that her most recent book, Medicalized
Motherhood: Views From the Lives of African-American and Jewish Women,
combines these areas of interest. Medicalized motherhood refers to a situation
where medical ideas about child health dominate the way motherhood is understood
in society.
Through the narratives of mothers themselves, the book documents how women
responded to experts' advice in ways uniquely shaped by their ethnicity,
race and class. The book examines women's relation to medicine in mid-20th-century
America.
"I'm interested in how people make use of medical ideas and teach them
in everyday lives, particularly what it means to motherhood," Litt
said.
For her book, Litt interviewed African-American and Jewish women who were
mothers in Philadelphia during the 1930s and 1940s.
"The women that I interviewed happened to be from traditional families,"
Litt said. "The men brought home the income and the women stayed home
and were the primary caregivers for their families.
"These two groups of women came from cultures steeped in home remedies,
and they were the first generations to make the transition from that to
going to the doctor instead," Litt said.
"Medicine became a dominant authority figure, and these mothers measured
their relation to it as a sign of their family's social advancement and
inclusion in society."
During these decades the general pediatrician emerged, replacing the old
traditional medical methods of caring for a child.
"It was during this time that the well baby visit was established,"
she said. "Everyday care fell under medical jurisdiction."
Litt discovered that Jewish mothers typically sought out Jewish doctors
for their children. African-American women sought out African-American doctors.
"The women developed relationships with a medical professional through
friendship networks that were entirely homogeneous," Litt said.
The first-person narratives in Litt’s book indicate that Jewish mothers
sought out medical advice as a way of moving up in social class. African-American
women were often confronted with a racist medical profession.
Poor African-American women lacked the networks that the Jewish mothers
and upper- and middle-class African-American mothers had.
"The poor African-American women were much less medicalized than their
counterparts," Litt said. "They continued to use home remedies
that their mothers handed down to them."
Medicalized Motherhood recently received an honorable mention for
outstanding achievement in scholarship from the American Sociological Association
(ASA) Section on Race, Class and Gender.
Litt’s current research is on low-income women's responses to welfare
reform. She is also looking into the mothering practices and experiences
of women whose children have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive
Disorder.
"I'm starting to study how African-American and white women respond
to the diagnosis of their child having Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder
and how parents make decisions about treatment," Litt said.
Around LAS
October 21 to November 3, 2002
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