The purpose of this research is to examine Marjory Gordon's taxonomy of functional health-care areas as they relate to the Mexican-American culture of the current period. The plan of the research will be to set forth each of the areas in turn, and to discuss the form and substance of professional literature that has treated the areas in question with specific reference to Mexican-Americans.
Health Perception/Health Management. An important element of health perception in the Mexican-American community emerges as body mass and weight. This has implications for overall health management because of the connection that perceptions of health have with other aspects of health; in other words, health perception has fundamental importance to general good health. In this regard, Alexander and Blank (1988) found that mothers of a group of obese Mexican-American children preferred plump babies. On the other hand, an implication of body health as arising from cultural health is a factor that must be noticed, a point to which we shall return in a discussion of nutrition and metabolism. This study, however, found as well that those mothers of obese children were obese themselves.
It is not indicated in the scope of that study exactly the extent of the impact of maternal psychology and cultural-values transmission that is prevalent in the Mexican-American community; however, the preference for fatter children indicated in the subject community suggests that such preference is at least as much or more an index of good cultural health per se than of body health per se. The comfort level that obese mothers exhibit for obese children indicates that maternal behavior may have a significant impact on appropriate body weight of infants and children in the community. To the degree that lifelong nutritional habits begin and are set in early life, the perception of obesity as a condition of good health would appear to be an aspect of the healt...