Medicine and the Family: A Feminist Perspective. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 1998

CANDIB, Lucy M. Medicine and the Family: A Feminist Perspective. New York: BasicBooks, 1995. 360pp. $38.00 (h).

For centuries, traditional medicine has been infused with a masculine bias, often to the disadvantage of both doctors and patients. Candib challenges prevailing views and offers a family-oriented feminist approach to the practice of medicine. She systematically dissects the assumptions underlying current teachings about child and adult development, sexual abuse, the family life cycle, and family systems. She exposes the ways in which women are often ignored, subordinated, or blamed in the modern medical system. For example, she notes that women are often held solely responsible for all problems in their families, including child abuse and battering. Candib then reexamines the doctor-patient relationship from a feminist perspective, showing how "doctors-in-relation" allow caring to take center stage in clinical work, in contrast to the traditional medical emphasis on rationality and objectivity. By putting caring at the forefront, both caregivers and patients can begin to think about power in a new way, and to see the clinical relationship as healing and empowering, rather than unequal and combative.