Study: No Hike in Adjustment Issues for Kids of Mothers With Breast Cancer

Children whose mothers are suffering from breast cancer may not exhibit more psychosocial adjustment issues than other children, according to researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Researchers studied 35 children of 28 mothers diagnosed with breast cancer during the previous year. They compared these children with 34 others of 24 mothers with recent benign breast biopsies.

The mothers and children, ages 8-16, answered questionnaires about mood, behavior problems and social functioning to assess whether the children of the breast cancer mothers were at an increased risk of adjustment problems.

In the study published in Psycho-Oncology, researchers report that significant differences were not found between children in the breast cancer group and the comparison group on any of the measures, even though the mothers with breast cancer reported more psychological distress than the comparison mothers.

Researchers concluded that some adolescents whose mothers had breast cancer did better in social and academic activities when their mothers were more distressed, while adolescents whose mothers had benign biopsies did less well when their mothers were distressed.

The small size of the study limited the researchers' conclusions.

Other Sources: Psycho-Oncology