title: Differences in health care utilization between parents who perceive their child as vulnerable versus overprotective parents.
abstract: While a parental perception of child vulnerability to illness/injury is often used interchangeably with parental overprotection, research suggests that they are independent constructs. We hypothesized more frequent pediatric nonwell-child visits for perceived child vulnerability, but not for parental overprotection. The parents of 300 children, ages 2-5 years, enrolled in a health maintenance organization, were sampled. For children without medical conditions, there were no differences in nonwell-child care visits between the high perceived vulnerability and high parental protection groups (Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, WRST, P = .31). As expected, high parental protection was not significantly associated with increased nonwell-child care visits compared with the low parental protection group (WRST, P = .14). These findings suggest that markers other than health care utilization are required to identify these forms of parent-child relationship disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Ohio State University, College of Medicine, Children's Hospital, Columbus, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thomasgard
authors.forename: W P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Metz
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005192:Family Health; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006296:Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D009819:Office Visits / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012494:Sampling Studies