“He's Doing Fine”: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management Among Families of Seriously Ill Children

Gengler, Amanda M.

doi:10.1002/symb.195

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(29 reference statements)

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“…In anticipation of situations that may cause emotional strain, people may employ “preemptive strategies” to avoid those situations altogether or use strategies that create more positive emotional states in their interactions (Gengler, 2015). Interviewees used various strategies to prevent additional emotional strain and emotion work.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Davey et al (2012) examined how African American parents navigated BC and parenting by withholding intense emotional information while communicating information about BC as an illness in interactions with their children. In her study of parents with seriously ill children, Gengler (2015) noted that in anticipation of "precarious emotional circumstances" parents would devise "their own preemptive strategies to maintain steady and hopeful emotional states for themselves and their children" by offering upbeat responses to inquiries about their children's health, limiting their social interactions, and withholding information about their children's condition (p. 615).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I Had to Make Them Feel at Ease”: Narrative Accounts of How Women With Breast Cancer Navigate Social Support

2021

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Social scientific studies of social support predominantly focus on the positive associations between social support and emotional well-being. The negative aspects of social support have received much less attention. We conducted semi-structured interviews of women with breast cancer ( n = 47) to examine the emotional strain associated with social support and how recipients navigate it in ways that protect themselves and their relationships. Based on our analysis of narratives of women’s lived experiences of breast cancer, we found that social support can be perceived negatively and associated with experiences of emotional strain. Interviewees engaged in strategies of avoidance, information control, and cognitive reframing to minimize emotional strain. We applied the concept of emotion work to understand the complexity of emotional strain in this context. The findings highlight the difficulties of social support from a recipient’s perspective and emphasize the importance of perception and agency in navigating this experience.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Had to Make Them Feel at Ease”: Narrative Accounts of How Women With Breast Cancer Navigate Social Support

2021

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“…Hope in the setting of living and coping with serious illness features prominently in the literature. 11,13,14,16,19,21,22,30,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] Hope can be used in different contexts, and mean different things to different people. We have seen parents hope for a possible but exceedingly unlikely outcome, such as cure in the setting of an incurable illness.…”

Section: Parental Hope In the Face Of A Child's Serious Illnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissonance in views between parents and clinicians of children with serious illness: How can we bridge the gap?

Katz

Hynson

Gillam

2021

J Paediatrics Child Health

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Parents of children with serious illness must find a tolerable way of living each day, while caring for their child and making decisions about their treatments. Sometimes clinicians worry that parents do not understand the seriousness of their child's illness, including possible death. This can lead to tension, disagreement and even conflict. Such situations continue to occur despite expanding literature to help clinicians understand drivers of parental behaviour and decision-making. Some of this literature relates to the role of hope and how parents characterise being a 'good parent'. This article will summarise some of the applications and limitations of the hope and 'good parent' literature, as well as frameworks to understand grief and loss. We propose, however, that there is at least one missing link in understanding potential dissonance in views between parents and clinicians. We will make a case for the importance of a richer understanding about if, and how, parents 'visit' the 'reality' that clinicians wish to convey about their child's diagnosis and prognosis. We propose that clinician understanding about the benefits and burdens of 'visiting' this 'reality' for an individual family may help guide conversations and rapport, which in turn may influence decision-making with benefits for the child, family and clinicians.

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“…Scholars find that bloggers produce narratives framing particular diagnoses as medically legitimate (e.g., ADD/ADHD) (Clarke and Lang, 2012) and narratives designed to counter stigma and rejection based on their health concern (Loukisas and Papoudi, 2016). Bloggers also write to relay health‐related information to family members (Gengler 2015). Bloggers are also aware that their blog may be used as a resource by others who suffer the same condition as well as for those who are outside this community (Orr et al 2017; Pettigrew, Archer, and Harrigan 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Somatic Work: the Case of Sensory Processing Disorder

Medley-Rath

2020

Sociological Inquiry

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This study examines how people affected by sensory processing disorder (SPD) make their sensory experience visible and meaningful in their unprompted public blog‐writing. I analyzed 66 online narratives written by 44 people affected by SPD. The non‐normative sensory responses of people with SPD are invisible but may result in socially disapproved and challenging behavior (e.g., extreme picky eating). Minimal social and medical recognition of this condition puts people affected by SPD in the position of needing to explain their experience and account for behaviors that are culturally coded as inappropriate. To understand how people affected by SPD communicated their experience to unknown readers, I used techniques associated with grounded theory to analyze their unprompted narratives on The Mighty. Bloggers use several strategies to define SPD for readers, including making use of expert definitions, examples, and comparisons with normative sensory experience, and negative definitions that differentiated SPD from other disorders, normal childhood behavior, and misbehavior. Bloggers used these definitional strategies in conjunction with discourses of normal childhood, good parenting, and biomedicine to communicate and legitimize their experience. Moreover, bloggers did not challenge normative expectations of the human senses but instead reinforced conventional notions about how the senses are supposed to work.

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“He's Doing Fine”: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management Among Families of Seriously Ill Children

Cited by 9 publications

References 36 publications

“I Had to Make Them Feel at Ease”: Narrative Accounts of How Women With Breast Cancer Navigate Social Support

“I Had to Make Them Feel at Ease”: Narrative Accounts of How Women With Breast Cancer Navigate Social Support

Dissonance in views between parents and clinicians of children with serious illness: How can we bridge the gap?

Online Somatic Work: the Case of Sensory Processing Disorder

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