This study was conducted to assess the difficulty in adaptation of mothers to Atopic Dermatitis Infant. The research question was : How is mothers' feeling of Atopic Dermatitis Infant? Twenty-six mothers with AD infants (6M-47M) participated in the present study. All mothers were interviewed. Semi-structured interview was used. 137 problems were identified. Mothers were found strong by attached to infants with Atopic Dermatitis. Pessimism was noted in 25% of the cases. Mothers were angered by infant condition in spite of effort in care. This caused great stress and exhaustion. Especially, care of itch control, dormancy and meal management were difficult for mothers. There were 55 cases of satisfactory adaptation in 18 mothers by positive thought, family support, appropriate care and infant care priority. Nurses should encourage the mothers in their efforts to achieve satisfactory.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the feeling and perceptions related to child rearing held by mothers and fathers of infants and young children who suffer from bronchial asthma ; and to elucidate similarities and dissimilarities in these attitudes and perceptions of their parents. The subjects were the parents of infants and young children, who were being treated at our pediatric outpatient department. A survey was conducted by distributing a questionnaire that was designed by us. It concerned child rearing, growth and development of children, the concept on the "role of the father", and persons who act as counselors and cooperators in child care. Data were collected from 58 mothers and 47 fathers. Approximately one-half of the mother-father pairs agreed on "raising a child to become a person with consideration for others" as the most important goal in child rearing. This coincided with the responses from mothers of healthy children. The data also indicated that a diagnosis of bronchial asthma has a certain effect on mothers' attitudes toward child rearing. Like mothers, fathers were concerned mainly with the illness and its treatment. Agreement between in mother-father pairs was generally rare : their expectations and perceptions on the "father's role" also differed, indicating the need for mutual understanding and mental adjustment for child rearing as a joint effort of a mother and father. In most instances, fathers acted as counselors and cooperators for mothers on the matter of childrearing and the illness ; but the average number of persons that mothers can turn to for psychological support was only 2.12 to 1.02 (some even reported that they had none). The need for more substantial support for mothers are reaffirmed.

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The purposes of this study were two folds. One is to clarify the roles of physicians, nurses and parents on the process of explanation and receiving some agreement on receiving an examination or a treatment from children. Another purpose is to clarify the relation among three roles; the roles of physicians, nurses and parents in the process described above. The subjects were 17 children who received an examination or a treatment, aged from 2 to 10, and their parents, physicians and nurses who concerned in the examination or treatment. Participant observation was used to depict the scene of an examination or a treatment. After the procedure was over, semi-structured interviews were carried out with physicians, nurses and parents on their thought about explanation and their role. The data were analyzed qualitatively among the study group. The results indicated that most influential factor for physicians' and nurses' role perception on the process of explanation to children was a age difference of the children. The roles which physicians, nurses and parents carried out on the process of explanation and needed for encouraging children's understanding about receiving an examination or a treatment included; to observe children's reaction, to give explanations to children with their developmental appropriateness and promote their understanding of the present situation, and to bring out children's "Kakugo (decision to do)" and continuation to go through with the procedure. The relation among three were divided into 6 types. These results suggested that it is important that nurses perform the role to complement the insufficient parts of roles which physicians and parents are performing. In order for nurses to take these role and ensure positive outcome on children, the nurses need to observe children's reaction carefully to pick up subtle message contained in their behavior.

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The research has two purposes. The first purpose is to clarify realities of social support for mothers whose children need medical care at home. The second purpose is to examine roles of nurses for those mothers. Result are as follows; 1) Most of major support resources for mothers, is her husband and her mother. The second is medical staff, the third is facility of kinder-garden staff, and the fourth is mother who has same situations for her child. 2) Her husband and her mother are key persons under care at home. 3) Details of support contents are, most types of supports are emotional, instrumental supports. Few types of supports are imformation, evaluation. Types of supports from medical related staff are ones mainly from emotion and information side. 4) Insufficient support are recognized as instrumental support. Especially we observed actual situation that family and relations cannot cope with problems occuring when their children need many kinds of medical cares. 5) It is indicated that nurses should compensate with support from points of information, evaluation, and medical care support.

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The purposes of this study was to identify the state of normalization of mothers of children with a blood cancer. The subjects were 16 mothers of school age children with a blood cancer. They were submitted to semi-organized interviews concerning the treatment of children, the family, community, school and social lives, and how they explain the disease that they have to their children. The result of interviews were analyzed on five points of view which were <the state of defining illness of children>, <the state of defining their family lives and their social lives>, <the state of acknowledging or influence of illness>, <strategies of normalization management>. The results were as follows : 1) The state of normalization of mothers were patterned upon five styles : <normalization model>, <transitional stage>, <rejection>, <no-normalization>, <denial>. 2) A most important factor for normalization was to accept children illness and their conditions.

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The purpose of this study was to idntify relationships among family stress, family coping, level of family functioning and burnout in primaty caregivers of chronically ill children. The sample consisted of 119 families with chronically ill children at home, who were aged 3 month to 17 years. A structured qeustionnaire including The Burnout Measure (Pines & Ironstone 1981), modified Family Coping Behavior Inventory II, and Family Stress Measure was used to collect the data from primary caregivers at the outpatient clinic of a university hospital. The burnout scores were divided into two groups : at risk for burnout (over 3.0), and healthy (under 2.9). The Wilcoxson test was used to examine differences between the two groups. The results were : 1) The group at risk for burnout showed a significantly higher family stress score, instrumental coping score and endurance coping score than the healthy group. 2) The group at risk for burnout registered a significantly lower normalization coping score and level of family functioning than the healthy group. These results indicate that the group at risk for burnout needs support to alleviate family stress and to facilitate normalization of coping and of the level of family function.

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