Comparing child-rearing practices in parents of children with cancer and parents of healthy children

Abstract

This nonexperimental, descriptive study identified parenting behaviors and differences in the reported child-rearing practices between parents of children diagnosed with cancer and parents of healthy children. Two groups of parents were included: 58 parents of children diagnosed with cancer at a large urban children's cancer center and 58 parents of healthy children. The total group of parents ranged from 22 to 58 years with 35.7 and 35.9 years as the mean ages of the two groups. A variety of races were included among the parents and educational backgrounds ranged from high school and vocational to graduate/doctoral degrees. Each child with cancer selected a healthy friend of the same age, sex, and race who served as their healthy counterpart for this study. Each of these child's parents were then involved in the data collection process. Data were collected over a 2-month period using the Child-Rearing Practices Report (CRPR) in the Q-sort format, in which the parent sorted 91 cards containing 91 items dealing with child-rearing. Items were compared between the two groups using two-tailed t-tests. Using a significance level of alpha = .02, 11 significant differences were found between the two groups in the domains of parental expectations, discipline, expression of emotion, parental concern/worry, and overprotectiveness. In conclusion, the primary types of items that shared or demonstrated significant differences between the two groups of parents were those dealing with discipline and overprotectiveness issues. The items responded to most significantly different were, “I tend to spoil my child” and “I worry about the health of my child,” with the parents of children with cancer consistently rating these as more descriptive of them than the parents of healthy children did. Finally, this study suggested that the time of the child's diagnosis with cancer also affected the parent's reported child-rearing practices.