The Hope, Burden, and Family Function in Mothers of Children with Cancer

암 환아 어머니의 희망, 부담감과 가족기능

The purpose of the descriptive correlation study was to examine relations among the hope, the burden and the family function in mothers caring for children with cancer. 145 mothers completed the three questionaires of the study divided into tree sections: a) The Hope Scale, b) The Burden Scale, c) FACES-Ⅲ. The collected data was analysed with t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe test and Pearson correlation coefficients. The results were as follows: 1) The average age of mothers of children with cancer was 35.6 years old and the ages between 30 to 39 were the most abundant. 57.3％ of the mothers had an education level of below high school education and 66.0％ had religion. The average age of the children was 8.6 years old. Ages between 1 to 7 were the most and 60.8％ were diagnosed as leukemia. 2) Regarding the section of degree of burden, mothers of children with cancer marked 2.6 out of 5, and the degree of hope 3.2 out of 4. The result for family function came out to be 3.5 out of 5, an average of family cohesion of 3.9 and family adaptation of 3.1. 3) There were significantly less burden to the mothers who were living together with a spouse compared to the mothers who were not. Also mothers who replied that they preserved good health came out to be exposed to less burden compared to the mothers who did not. In analysing hope according to the general characteristics of mothers of children with cancer, mothers who were employed marked high in the degree of hope compared to unemployed mothers. Furthermore, the degree of family cohesion marked higher with mothers who had higher education of college graduate, mothers with religion and mothers with a monthly family income of over ￦3,000,000, compared to the group of mothers with lower education of high school graduate, non-religious or with a monthly family income of less than ￦1,000,000. 4) Excluding the fact that the group sorted with children diagnosed as leukemia marked a perceivably high score regarding family cohesion, compared to groups with other cancers, the degree of burden, hope and family cohesion did not show any noticeable difference according to characteristics of children with different cancers. 5) In the correlation of the hope, the burden and the family function regarding the mothers of children with cancer, the burden did not have any manifest relationship with hope or family function. However, the degree of hope and family function cohesion had a direct proportional relationship, as family cohesion marked higher when the degree of hope were high.