Caregiving, ethical and informal: emerging challenges in the sociology of health and illness.

The concept of care, integral to medical sociology and to the sociology of health and illness, suggests new challenges in two key areas of this field: 1) within professional socialization, an examination of socialization to ethical thinking, behavior, and identity among professional caregivers, building on the substantial literature already accumulated; 2) in the arena of hidden or informal care providers, an analysis of male and female informal providers and the productive work, other than care, done by these individuals. In both analyses, as well as in all medical sociology and sociology of health and illness, gender, race, and class require more attention. Both analytic endeavors influence the substance and the contours of the field.