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Updated: Jul 18, 2025

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Psychological functioning of childhood cancer survivors: Longitudinal associations with the parental context
Elise Van Laere1, Koen Raymaekers1, Sofie Prikken2
1Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, KU Leuven.
Objective:
The long-term psychological effects of childhood cancer vary, with childhood cancer survivors reporting depressive symptoms, fear of cancer recurrence, and benefit finding. As cancer is considered a family disease, investigating the parental context may provide insight into such individual differences in psychological functioning of survivors. This study examined the directionality of effects among parental sense of incompetence, parenting dimensions (responsiveness, psychological control, and overprotection), and survivor psychological functioning (depressive symptoms, fear of cancer recurrence, and benefit finding).
Method:
This three-wave longitudinal study (covering 2 years) included 125 Dutch-speaking childhood cancer survivors (ages 14-24, 95.2% diagnosed < 18 years, and time since diagnosis 2-22 years), 114 mothers, and 91 fathers. Survivors reported (SR) about their psychological functioning and perceived parenting. Mothers reported (MR) and fathers reported (FR) about parenting and sense of incompetence. Cross-lagged panel models were estimated for each informant's perspective on parenting separately.
Results:
Different relations were obtained for each informant. Primarily unidirectional relations were found from parental sense of incompetence to maladaptive parenting (psychological control across informants and maternal overprotection SR) and from parenting to survivor functioning. Maternal and paternal responsiveness SR positively predicted survivors' benefit finding and negatively predicted survivors' depressive symptoms, respectively. Responsiveness MR and overprotection MR positively predicted survivors' fear of cancer recurrence and depressive symptoms, respectively. One consistent reverse pathway emerged: maternal and paternal responsiveness SR negatively predicted maternal and paternal sense of incompetence, respectively.
Conclusion:
The results support parent-driven processes impacting survivors' psychological functioning and stress the need to focus on multiple perspectives when investigating family dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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