When family members experience a diagnosis of a chronic disease (e.g., cancer) or a health crisis (e.g., postpartum depression), not only the diagnosed individuals but entire families experience immediate and long-term stress as a consequence. Families with members dealing with serious health conditions may be confronted with significant challenges posed by treatment regimes, impacts on day-to-day activities, disruption of family roles, the threat of possible death, and a host of psychosocial challenges. This book is about families facing these challenges, uncertain about what to do, how to help, or how the condition will affect their daily life. Providing a coherent discussion of original research that examines communication patterns and processes involved in the day-to-day management of health conditions, this book lays bare the raw emotional experiences of families communicating with one another amid uncertainty and, for some, in the face of death.

Constructing Motherhood and Daughterhood Across the Lifespan explores the complex dynamics between mother and daughter over the lifespan. The editors believe that these vital family roles are socially and communicatively constructed, shaped, and molded as mothers and daughters navigate, respond to, and negotiate cultural and familial discourses. Aimed at undergraduate students, this timely book includes course activities and discussion questions in every chapter and a complete term syllabus to enhance a professor's teaching, providing a smooth route for adoption as a course text. The book also builds on and contributes to the critical and theoretical research in family communication, media studies, and gender studies, delving into the nuanced communication surrounding motherhood and daughterhood in the United States.