Working through cancer: Economic precarity and the social meaning of survival for parent-survivors in the United States

While US cancer survival rates have improved in recent years, the rising incidence of early-onset cancers means cancer is shifting younger, imposing new generational challenges for survivors and their families. This article explores the experience of a cancer diagnosis during one’s re/productive years by analyzing how parents with dependent children maintain a future amid heightened economic precarity (e.g., loss of stable employment, downward mobility, and a degraded public sphere). By linking physical survival with the social conditions necessary for post-treatment quality of life, we develop a more collectivistic notion of survivorship, where parent-survivors’ efforts to stay employed during treatment serve as an extension of family caregiving in austere times. Reflecting on how the lead authors’ own experience of work and cancer emerged in interviews with 12 parent-survivors, we intervene on traditional team science methods, making space for the autoethnographic voices that underlie interpretations of illness.