Research on the association between experiences of poor parenting in childhood and cancer risk at older ages
Childhood experiences of parenting were measured using a shortened (7-item) version of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), which has been designed to collect retrospective information rcs data malaysia about parenting experiences in childhood (when people aged ≤15 years). PBI focuses on two fundamental dimensions of parenting, care and overprotection and has good long-term reliability.
According to the PBI developers (see original publication by Parker et al. 1979), parental care as measured by the PBI refers to parental behaviours reflecting emotional warmth, affection, empathy, closeness and care for one’s child as opposed to emotional coldness and indifference.
Parental overprotection refers to parental behaviours reflecting:
overprotection,
intrusion,
excessive contact
prevention of independent behaviour as opposed to allowance of independence and autonomy.
The seven-item PBI includes three care and four overprotection items, which we used to derive care and overprotection scores for both natural parents and a parenting summary score.
Prior research
Before examining the association between poor quality parenting and cancer, I examined the association between poor quality parenting and mortality (the paper can be downloaded here).
The main finding of the mortality analyses was that poor quality parenting is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Interestingly, I also found a strong (but non-significant) association with cancer mortality, which was the initial stimulus to examine whether childhood experiences of poor quality parenting were associated with the development of cancer in adulthood.