The ethnographic context of illness among single‐women‐headed households in rural Peru

Abstract

Peru is undergoing many deleterious economic and social changes, and the health consequences for families headed by single women is of special concern. However, not all single mothers’ families may be at similar risk of morbidity. My purpose in the present study was to determine whether variation in illness prevalence was associated with ostensibly small differences in socioeconomic resources and physical living conditions in areas like Peru. I used both qualitative and quantitative methods in this study. The sample included single‐women‐headed households from the rural Nuñoa District, located in the southern Peruvian Andes (N = 22 families with 90 individuals). Quantitative cross‐sectional survey results suggested that the mother's formal education, the availability of a latrine, drinking water contamination, the gender ratio of the household, and the quality of the social support network were key risk factors. They statistically predicted 35–91% of the morbidity variance between families (p ≤ .03‐.0001). I illustrate these findings in three ethnographic case studies. The case studies show how the degree of illness among single‐women‐headed families was affected by small differences in their social and physical living conditions.