Behavioral adjustment and self-esteem of school-age children of women with breast cancer.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To describe children's psychosocial adjustment to their mother's breast cancer and to compare their level of adjustment with normative data and with the level of adjustment of children of women with fibrocystic breast disease or diabetes. Hypotheses tested were (a) children of women with breast cancer would be most negatively affected and (b) families of mothers with fibrocystic breast disease would require less family adaptation than families of women with breast cancer or diabetes.

DESIGN

One component of a larger longitudinal survey.

SETTING

University-based physician clinic in a metropolitan area in the Northwestern United States.

SAMPLE

Mothers, predominantly Caucasian, with medically controlled diabetes mellitus (n = 18), nonmetastatic breast cancer (n = 13), or biopsy-proven fibrocystic breast disease (n = 17) and their children (N = 48), who ranged in age from 6 to 12.

METHODS

Five in-home interviews conducted at four-month intervals.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Behavioral adjustment using the Louisville Behavior Checklist (maternal report) and the Zeitlin Coping Inventory (nurse-observer report) and self-esteem using the Personal Attribute Inventory for Children (children's self-report).

FINDINGS

Children of women with breast cancer scored better than average on behavioral adjustment (mothers' ratings) and were judged by nurse observers to be better behaviorally adjusted than children in the noncancer illness groups. Children of women with breast cancer and of women with diabetes tended to score significantly lower on self-esteem than the comparative sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Measures of childhood adjustment to chronic medical illness in mothers need to distinguish between behavioral adjustment and self-esteem. Discrepancies between child ratings and mother and nurse-observer ratings suggest that differences exist.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE

Findings are preliminary in nature, and other explanations for findings must be ruled out. However, if a child's self-appraisal is affected negatively by the mother's illness, it would be appropriate to identify ways to increase emotional and physical exchange with the child and to interpret inaccessibility in ways that protect the child's positive self-appraisal.