Parenting through grief: A cross-sectional study of recently bereaved adults with minor children

Background: Grieving adults raising parentally-bereaved minor children experience persistently elevated symptoms of depression and grief. However, the factors associated with their mental health outcomes are not well understood. Aim: To investigate the psychosocial and demographic characteristics associated with grief distress and depressive symptom severity in bereaved adults with minor children. Design: Cross-sectional, web-based survey. Setting/participants: Eight hundred forty-five bereaved adults raising minor (age <18 years) children who had experienced the death of a co-parent. Primary outcomes were grief distress (Prolonged Grief Disorder-13), depressive symptoms (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System-Depression), and widowed parenting self-efficacy (WPSES). Results: Mean grief scores were 33.5; mean depression scores were 58.3. Among the 690 individuals more than 6 months bereaved, 132 (19.3%) met criteria for prolonged grief disorder. In adjusted models, participants reporting higher grief scores were more recently bereaved, identified as mothers, non-Caucasian, had lower education and income, and had not anticipated their co-parent’s death. The statistical modeling results for depression scores were similar to grief scores except that depression was not associated with anticipation of co-parent death. Parents reporting lower WPSES scores had higher grief and depression scores. Retrospective assessments of more intense parenting worries at the time of co-parent death were also associated with higher grief and depression scores. Conclusions: For bereaved adults with minor children, unanticipated co-parent death was linked with higher grief distress but not symptoms of depression. Addressing parenting concerns may represent a common pathway for improving the mental health of parentally-bereaved families.

MIDDLE-AGED ADULTS’ BEREAVEMENT RESPONSE TO PARENT DEATH: THE ROLE OF PRE-LOSS RELATIONSHIP QUALITY

The bereavement literature in adulthood has largely focused on spousal loss. Yet the death of a parent is an influential – and expected – loss experience in middle and later life. This study analyzed prospective data from two waves of the Family Exchanges Study (2008 and 2013) to explore adults’ (N = 192; Mage = 56.76) experience of a recent parent death in the past 5 years, including grief responses and positive memories of the deceased parent. We examined how pre-loss relationships with the deceased parent (e.g., positive and negative relationship quality, relationship importance) are associated with different bereavement responses among the bereaved children. Findings showed that the levels of grief were higher for children who placed more importance on the parent prior to that parent’s death. Positive relationship quality was associated with positive memories after a parent’s death. However, negative relationship quality was not associated with any bereavement responses.

The Dance of Closeness-Distance in Couple Relationships after the Death of a Parent

In-depth interviews of 18 couples focused on the couple relationship after a partner experienced the death of a parent. Working from a view of couple relationships as involving a dance of closeness and distance, never getting too far apart or coming too close, the article explores how a parent's death can alter the conditions, forms, and grounds of closeness-distance and how issues of support following the death are entangled in the dance. As they grieve, bereaved partners might want closeness at some times, distance at others, and might welcome or reject offered support. A parent death may be freeing in terms of time or emotion and may profoundly effect thoughts about the meaning of life. The dance of closeness-distance may change if people feel freed by the death and work with new life meanings. Closeness-distance is also affected by how partners feel about what they shared or did not share as a result of the loss. Further complicating the dance are the effects of practical issues that may arise following a parent death, including dealing with a surviving parent and with the estate of the deceased.

The Adult Child's Acceptance of Parent Death

In the grief and bereavement literature, the discussion of acceptance often regards it as an end-point of the process and utilizes a definition that is linked to duration and intensity of grief. The study of parent death is no exception. Adult children are rarely asked whether or why they have or have not accepted the death of an elderly parent, or even what acceptance means to them. The extent to which such studies accurately report on the experience of parent death acceptance is questionable. Using ethnographic and linguistic techniques, this study approaches acceptance through a qualitative examination of adult children's verbatim responses to direct inquiries about their acceptance of an elderly parent's death. Findings indicate that while the majority of adult children readily assert acceptance of their parent's death, these assertions are contingent upon important beliefs and values relating to the death, the power of feelings, and the strength of memory. Further, and most important, acceptance appears to be a phenomenon adult children feel compelled to explain.

The Role of Gender in Middle-Age Children's Responses to Parent Death

The impact of the deaths of the last surviving elderly parent of 212 middle-aged children was studied. Daughters expressed more emotional upset, somatic response, and continuing tie with the deceased parent than sons; sons reported more acceptance of the death than daughters. The child's gender was not associated with a sense of personal finitude or control of grief. When we control in regressions for characteristics of the parent, the child, and the quality of their relationship, child's gender continued to add significantly to the bereavement outcomes above.

Patterns of Change following Parent Death in Midlife Adults

Forty midlife adults, twenty-two women and eighteen men, who had experienced the loss of a parent were interviewed in order to study the long-term impact of parent death. The sample included thirty-six father deaths and eleven mother deaths. Findings suggest that the quality of the early parent-child bond was related to later grief reactions. Gender differences were found in degree of response to death of the father-women demonstrated greater affect than men-while both men and women demonstrated strong affect following the death of the mother. Parent death preceded a time of upheaval and transition for most of the sample, and this upheaval was related to themes of personal mortality and to changes in interpersonal relationships. The event of parent death was an important symbolic event for midlife adults and merits further study.