Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract
Low-income and racial-ethnic minority families of children with disabilities face substantial obstacles to adequate care provision resulting in potential compromises to their children’s well-being. Low-income job conditions in a service sector economy, diminished public resources, and increased privatization of care force parents to make anguishing decisions as they negotiate the often conflicting obligations of wage work and care work. These decisions have consequences for the financial well-being of the family and the health and general well-being of the children. Minority and immigrant families face particular obstacles to services due to language and cultural barriers.
Qualitative analyses of work, care, and services in families caring for children with disabilities tend not to be cross-cultural and comparative; most of the samples include exclusively white respondents. In this project, I have sought to fill some of this gap by collecting data through in-depth interviews with single- and two-parent white and Latino families in order to explore comparatively the issues they face, the strategies they use to negotiate the competing demands in their lives, and the potential differences between social/emotional/behavioral disorders and motor or other kinds of physical disabilities, or differences across race, immigration status, employment and income, and family structure.