IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v40y1995i1p5-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Parental incompetence' and 'selective neglect': Blaming the victim in child survival

Author

Listed:
  • Finerman, Ruthbeth

Abstract

The Child Survival Revolution has produced inconsistent results in reducing global infant and child morbidity and mortality rates. Several recent studies employ concepts of 'parental incompetence' and 'selective neglect' as catch-phrases to account for variations in the outcome of family health programs. This concept shifts liability for illness from health agencies and providers to beneficiaries. It associates program failure with noncompliance resulting from parental ignorance or indifference to the welfare of offspring. This paper presents data which support a view of parents as concerned and pro-active health seekers whose parenting standards sometimes conflict with those of external health agents, and whose caretaking decisions sometimes force them to weigh concerns for individual children against demands of the family as a whole. Implications of parental accountability for child survival are discussed as they shape research and health policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Finerman, Ruthbeth, 1995. "'Parental incompetence' and 'selective neglect': Blaming the victim in child survival," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 5-13, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:40:y:1995:i:1:p:5-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(94)00122-A
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maya Unnithan Kumar & K MCNAY & A CASTALDO, 2014. "Women's Migration, Urban Poverty and Child Health in Rajasthan," Working Papers id:5632, eSocialSciences.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:40:y:1995:i:1:p:5-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.