The Anthropologist as Caregiving Daughter: Lessons from the World of the Frail Elderly

Abstract

My Mother's Hip: Lessons from the World of Eldercare (Temple University Press, 2004) is based on both my mother's experiences in navigating the healthcare system after suffering a double hip fracture and mine as her principal caregiver. What happens when an anthropologist who studies global aging inadvertently falls into the role of caregiver? Much like a physician who finds himself in an exotic world when becoming a patient, the social scientist–caregiver immediately begins to deconstruct the systemic flaws from a professional perspective. My Mother's Hip opened the Pandora's box of how we care for an aging society in the context of a fragmented medical system. We who write such books see a glaring need to inform the public about critical medical issues that inevitably crop up in the course of eldercare. Parallel to the medical story is the story of how an author produces a trade book about a problematical topic and promotes it without alienating the popular audience.