title: Telling children their mother is seriously ill or dying: mapping French people's views.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  What to tell children when their mother's life is seriously endangered is a largely unstudied issue.
  
  
  METHODS
  We had 255 lay persons in France judge the appropriateness of the parents' behaviour in 48 scenarios of parents dealing with this problem. The scenarios comprised according to a four within-subject orthogonal design: child's age (4, 6, 8 or 10 years), severity of disease (lethal or worrisome but curable), child's concern or not about his or her mother's illness and parents' decision about how much to tell (tell nothing, minimize or tell the full truth).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Cluster analysis revealed four clusters, labelled 'always tell the truth' (33%), 'tell the truth or minimize' (16%), 'tell nothing or minimize' (22%) and 'depends on child's age and level of concern' (29%). Women and participants who had already faced breaking bad news like this to children were more frequently members of the two 'tell the truth' clusters than other participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  People who have already experienced a situation of having to tell a child about their mother's bad health tend to think, more than others, that telling the truth is the best policy.
authors.affiliation: Mirail University, Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Muñoz Sastre
authors.affiliation: Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA.
authors.forename: P C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Sorum
authors.affiliation: Institute of Advanced Studies (EPHE), Paris, France.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mullet
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005260:Female; D005602:France / Q000453:epidemiology; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology; D002666:Psychology, Child; D019452:Terminally Ill; D014342:Truth Disclosure
keywords: France; breaking bad news; children; health communication; mother's death