Educating Childhood Cancer Survivors: a Qualitative Analysis of Parents Mobilizing Social and Cultural Capital

Childhood cancer impacts the child patient as well as the family and caregivers throughout diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. Secondary analysis of qualitative data revealed the critical role of parents’ adaptability and flexibility when navigating advocacy decisions about their child’s schooling following diagnosis and through survivorship. After cancer, adjusting to school means adjusting to a new normal creating challenges related to curriculum, peers, and educators that can affect quality of life. Critically, parents’ adjustment to a new advocacy role emerged as an important consideration. Concepts of social and cultural capital aid in understanding the experiences of parents whose children have returned to school following their successful treatment for pediatric cancer. Framed in this way, how parents mobilize (or do not mobilize) these forms of capital as they devise strategies to support their children are understood. This study interprets parent reports and actions as taken often in the hope that they will help both their own child and others that follow, creating mutual benefit for the network of people touched by cancer.