Parents With Cancer: Millions of Patients Juggle Chemotherapy and Childrearing

Jun. 28, 2010— -- When considering the challenges of raising two girls, changing diapers while on chemotherapy was not one that Morgan Alloway anticipated.

At age 27, Alloway, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Her youngest was only a year old at the time.

"It was very hard because I was so tired from the surgery, and I was on [chemotherapy pills]. And it turns out I had the cancer when I was pregnant with my second child, which was scary -- you wonder what effect that has," Alloway says.

Alloway is not alone. Though cancer is often thought of as a disease usually that strikes later in life, new research shows that 18 percent of newly diagnosed cancer patients are parents to one or more minor children. Of these patients, nearly a third of them are caring for children under the age of six.

This means that 2.85 million children in the United States are living with a parent who is battling or has survived cancer.

"That's not consistent with many people's view of cancer – [they] think of it as a disease of older adults, who aren't having these parenting challenges at the same time," says the lead author on the study, Kathryn Weaver of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

This research fills a longtime gap in the cancer literature, offering the first ever population-wide estimate of how many cancer survivors must also handle the challenges of raising children.

To get the estimated number of cancer patients with kids, Weaver and colleagues analyzed recent data on cancer survivors from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey.

Armed with these statistics, researchers hope to alert health professionals that patients with young children might need extra support.

"We really wanted to bring attention to this unique group of survivors and families who may be experiencing even greater challenges because of their family situation," Weaver says.