The Invisible Frontline: Experiences of Spousal Caregivers During COVID-19.

Spousal caregivers are a largely invisible population of unpaid long-term care providers in the United States. This paper examines their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic by drawing on data from 96 virtual and phone interviews with 44 spousal caregivers cohabitating with an ill partner across 22 states between June and December 2020. Findings show caregivers 1) adjusted care practices related to food and supply deliveries, socializing online, and infection control; 2) experienced impacts on care, including the loss of home health aides and reduced outpatient care; and 3) experienced emotional distress due to isolation, increased care demands, and resulting heightened anxiety and stress. These findings indicate specific types of ongoing resources caregivers may continue to need as the pandemic wanes, such as access to online support, a more robust infrastructure for food delivery, and planning for an increased projected shortage of home health aides.

Parent-Child Grief Interactions: A Qualitative Analysis and Conceptual Framework of the Lived Experiences of Young Widowed Parents.

A young parent's death is an unexpected event that incurs family stress and grief for the surviving parent and young children. However, few studies have examined widowed parents' grief experiences and parent-child interactions following a co-parent's death. Guided by phenomenology, this qualitative study examined the lived experiences of (N = 12) surviving parents grieving the loss of their co-parent. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using an inductive analytic procedure. Findings included themes of (1) not showing grief with child; (2) talking through grief/emotions with child; (3) maintaining connection between deceased parent and child; (4) timing of sharing things with children; and (5) utilizing bereavement and group support. These findings suggest that support services for surviving parents include providing information to them about the timing of when to share mementos with children and psychoeducation on emotion sharing and masking as part of the grief process with young children.

Missing Pieces: Engaging Sociology of Disability in Medical Sociology.

Medical sociologists and sociologists of disability study similar topics but, because of competing or conflicting theoretical paradigms, tend to arrive at different conclusions, engage with different audiences, and pursue different directions for social change. Despite diverging trajectories over the past 20 years, however, there remains clear potential overlap between both subfields in the study of disability and untapped opportunities for cross-fertilization. Our purpose here is to place these literatures in conversation with each other. Toward this end, we identify major themes in the last 20 years of medical sociology scholarship, gaps with regard to disability in those themes, and possibilities (including methodologies) we see at the intersection of medical sociology and the sociology of disability that could address these gaps.

Don't look at it as a miracle cure: Contested notions of success and failure in family narratives of pediatric cochlear implantation.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are a routine treatment for children identified with a qualifying hearing loss. The CI, however, must be accompanied by a long-term and intense auditory training regimen in order to possibly acquire spoken language with the device. This research investigates families' experiences when they opted for the CI and undertook the task of auditory training, but the child failed to achieve what might be clinically considered "success" - the ability to function solely using spoken language. Using a science and technology studies informed approach that places the CI within a complex sociotechnical system, this research shows the uncertain trajectory of the CI, as well as the contingency of the very notions of success and failure. To do so, data from in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of parents (n = 11) were collected. Results show the shifting definitions of failure and success within families, as well as suggest areas for further exploration regarding clinical practice and pediatric CIs. First, professionals' messaging often conveyed to parents a belief in the infallibility of the CI, this potentially caused "soft failure" to go undetected and unmitigated. Second, speech assessments used in clinical measurements of outcomes did not capture a holistic understanding of a child's identity and social integration, leaving out an important component for consideration of what a 'good outcome' is. Third, minority parents experience structural racism and clinical attitudes that may render "failure" more likely to be identified and expected in these children, an individualizing process that allows structural failures to go uncritiqued.

Expanding Systems Thinking: Incorporating Tools from Medical Sociology into MFT Education and Research.

The field of marriage and family therapy has historically focused on dynamics within family systems, and at times the role of social and cultural factors external to the family. To date, however, little scholarship has examined how therapists themselves are embedded within a mental healthcare system. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how structural components of the mental healthcare system shape the practice of therapy. We draw from the field of medical sociology to illustrate how three dominant structures-managed care, diagnosis, and evidence-based models-are intertwining and mutually reinforcing systems that have significant and long-term implications for systemic therapists and researchers. We recommend incorporating a sociological understanding of such structures into MFT education and research.

Parents of deaf children with cochlear implants: a study of technology and community.

The cochlear implant (CI) is increasingly used to treat deafness, despite arguments from the deaf community. Deaf children born to hearing parents are the fastest growing group of CI recipients, making parents the primary consumers. Instead of focusing on the controversy over implants, this article examines the clinical structures shaping parental decision-making and how parents integrate clinical practices into family and community. Observations and in-depth interviews were conducted in a CI clinic and at various community sites. The data reveal strong inter-institutional co-operations between the clinic, the state and local school districts. Working together, these institutions anticipate parental needs, foster a CI community and thus increase compliance. I conclude that implantation is an ongoing practice enculturating parents into a new community characterised by the adoption of long-term rehabilitative duties. However, the long-term nature of rehabilitation creates disparities in outcomes, which would be better understood through further research on the social relations in families and across parent networks in the CI community.