Mothers with chronic illness: a predicament of social construction.

In the context of a larger qualitative study, a database including extensive interviews with a subset of sixteen chronically ill mothers was obtained. Secondary analysis revealed that the women's concerns about themselves and their children included issues of performance, availability, dependency, and socialization. Further, these women reported that the health care system seemed incapable of recognizing or accounting for the profound interrelationship between their mothering and their illness. Analysis of these findings in terms of the conflicting social obligations inherent in the roles of "mother" and of "chronically ill person" provides a means by which to understand the women's impressions that it was a contradiction in terms to be both an effective mother and a good patient.