Time Discipline and Health/Communicative Labor in Pediatric Primary Care

In rural Southern Chile, native Mapuche families receive care mostly from non-indigenous clinicians. Parents and doctors alike orient to the importance of timely medical care, but clinical and communication norms also result in misunderstandings and tension. Parents find it hard to communicate about structural obstacles, and valued practices of care in families may conflict with normative expectations for timely presentation. Parents' disclosures about the duration of their children's illnesses can expose them to clinical censure, which in turn reinforces pernicious negative stereotypes about this racialized and marginalized community.