A Qualitative Exploration of Parenting Experiences with Health Conditions

Cunningham, John and Eccles, Fiona and Daiches, Anna (2023) A Qualitative Exploration of Parenting Experiences with Health Conditions. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

Text (JCunningham2018DClinPsy.cleaned)
JCunningham2018DClinPsy.cleaned.pdf - Published Version
Download (2MB)

Abstract

This thesis examines the experiences of parenting with health conditions, specifically that of cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Paper one is a systematic literature review and meta-synthesis of 20 papers which explore the experiences of persons with cancer when informing their children about their parental cancer. The research identified one superordinate theme of ‘protection’ and four themes of ‘deciding’, ‘telling’, ‘impact’ and ‘support’ that described the process of informing. The findings, recommendations for clinical practice and for future research are discussed at the end of this review. The second paper is a qualitative study that explores the experience of persons with Parkinson’s when parenting adolescents and young adults. Data were generated using semi-structured interviews and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings identified four themes of: ‘disclosing’, ‘holding on to the parent I was’, ‘changing as a parent’ and ‘an uncertain future’. These themes captured how the changes parents were subject to, began to impact their parental functioning and identity, leaving them worried about the future for their children. Recommendations for clinical practice and future research are also discussed for this paper. The final paper is a critical review of the above papers, comparing the two sets of findings and discussing the methodology in more detail. It considers the meaning of the work for the researcher and their role in their research process.