Family experiences as captured by parents of children with childhood cancer: A subsystem-centered analysis focusing on family wholeness

Abstract

 This study aimed to elucidate familial perceptions among parents of children diagnosed with cancer, focusing on various familial subsystems, such as husband-wife, parent-child, and sibling. Furthermore, this study aims to explore nursing interventions that support the holistic well-being of entire families. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five mothers and one father of children with childhood cancer, followed by a qualitative inductive analysis that revealed 11 categories. It was inferred that the parents were anxious about the experience of childhood cancer and wanted to protect their children, while the couples were centered around their children, accepting each other’s reactions and facing the disease, and through their children, “intersubjectively knowing parents and children, husband and wife, and children with childhood cancer and siblings”. Siblings had a sense of bonding with each other. In addition to bonding and feeling more united as a family, family relationships were maintained. The subsystem perspectives of parents and children, husband and wife, and siblings suggested the importance of supporting the family’s sense of remaining a family.