Coping, Hardiness, and Parental Stress in Parents of Children Diagnosed with Cancer

Previous research has demonstrated a significant increase in stress for parents with a child in active cancer treatment. As the number of children diagnosed with cancer continues to rise, there has been a call to identify factors that may contribute to positive outcomes in these families (e.g., Sloper, 2000; Streisand, Kazak, & Tercyak, 2003). Certain effective coping strategies, particularly related to more problem-focused forms of coping and hardiness, appear to be negatively related to parental stress. However, little is known about how these strategies may impact parental stress in families of children in active cancer treatment. The current study assessed the influence of coping and family hardiness on parental stress among parents of children in active cancer treatment. The study hypothesized that: higher levels of effective coping and hardiness will predict a significant amount of variance in parental stress after accounting for symptom severity; the effect of hardiness on parental stress will be attenuated after the addition of Coping I, Coping II, and Coping III in three separate regression models; and the parallel mediation model will partially mediate the relationship between hardiness and parental stress. Results did not support the hypothesis that family hardiness and coping would emerge as significant predictors of parental stress over and above symptom severity. Effective coping was not observed as a partial mediator in the relationship between family hardiness and parental stress. However, communication with other parents and consultation with the medical staff, was found to have a significant indirect relationship between family hardiness and parental stress. The current study provides further information on the enduring impact of symptom severity and the potential relationship between family hardiness, parental stress, and coping through communication with other parents and the medical staff. Masters thesis: http://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/232

Parenting a Chronically Ill Child: Social Support, Coping, Family Hardiness, and Maternal Stress

Parents of children with cancer experience higher stress than parents of children with other medical conditions or with no developmental concerns (Canam, 1993; Cohen, 1999). Researchers are beginning to explore a number of protective factors that may influence parental stress in parents of children with cancer. Social support (Abidin, 1992), problem-focused coping (Judge, 1998), and family hardiness (Maddi et al., 2006) have been related to lower levels of stress and more positive outcomes in parents of healthy children, but have not been fully explored in the pediatric cancer population. The current study was designed to assess the relationship between parental stress, social support, coping strategies, and family hardiness in mothers of children in active cancer treatment. It was hypothesized that: (a) problem-focused coping and social support would be inversely related to parenting stress and positively correlated with family hardiness, (b) emotion-focused and avoidance-based coping would be positively correlated with parenting stress and inversely related to family hardiness, (c) coping and family hardiness would emerge as significant predictors of parental stress when controlling for symptom severity and social support, and (d) hardiness would moderate the relationship between symptom severity and stress when controlling for social support. Results indicated that problem-focused coping and family hardiness did not emerge as unique predictors of parenting stress, and hardiness was not found to moderate the relationship between symptom severity and parenting stress. Future research for this population focusing on fathers, differing prognosis of the child, family hardiness of the current population, and limiting the research to specific types of cancer, treatment, or prognosis may be beneficial. Doctoral dissertation: http://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/232