EBOOK: Rethinking Experiences of Childhood Cancer: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Chronic Childhood Illness

"The experiences of the families rang true throughout. I have experienced many of these personally. ...It made me think differently about my personal experience as a parent of a child with cancer and my son's current social experiences." Macmillan Cancer Support This book offers a radical critique of existing psychosocial research on children’s experiences of cancer and proposes an alternative view informed by recent interpretive perspectives. Exploring topics from obtaining a diagnosis of childhood cancer through to sharing decision-making and communication, it reviews a wide-ranging body of research and theory on childhood, chronic illness, and cancer. The book also examines research that has focused on how parents and other family members experience childhood illness. Written by a sociologist, a psychologist and a practising paediatric oncologist, this book is unique in its approach and provides key reading across traditional disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the book highlights the emerging contribution of interpretive work to understanding chronic childhood illness and further develops the dialogue that has only recently emerged between the sociology of illness and the sociology of childhood. Rethinking Experiences of Childhood Cancer is aimed at researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of social science, childhood studies, nursing, medicine, mental health care, social work, clinical psychology and other professions allied to medicine, and will also be of interest to families who have been affected by childhood cancer. This book offers a fresh approach to the experience of childhood cancer. To date research in this area, this has been dominated by approaches which are limited in their capacity to understand fully the experience of childhood cancer. In concentrating largely on families who experience psychological problems arising from childhood cancer, they render uninteresting other experiences, including the experiences of children and parents who do not experience lasting psychological difficulties. Our book suggests that the experience of childhood cancer cannot be understood without considering key social processes, such as questions about identity, status and role. In doing so, it seeks to move beyond approaches which endlessly catalogue families' difficulties and will instead examine how they themselves understand their lives, and identify the cultural and material resources they need to support them in coming to terms with their extraordinary experiences This book offers a radical critique of existing research on children's experiences of cancer and proposes an alternative perspective informed by recent theoretical developments in childhood studies. It will review a range of research on children and young people aged 4-18 years with chronic illness, acknowledging issues that are specific to, or differentially impact upon children with cancer, and younger and older children within this broad age range. How does a diagnosis of cancer alter the biographies of children and families? How can we understand the experiences of children and families with childhood cancer? This book offers a critique of research on children's experiences of cancer and proposes an alternative perspective informed by theoretical developments in childhood studies. Written by a sociologist, psychologist and practising paediatric oncologist, this book offers a fresh theoretical approach to the experience of childhood cancer. The book also discusses the impact on parents and other family members when a child is diagnosed with cancer