Death, Adulthood, and a
Parent’s Tears
2007 Summer II
Dusana Rybarova
Adulthood and Death
• 25 to 60 years
• Increased awareness of aging and death
– Experience with death (parents, spouse,
friends, etc.)
• Erik Erikson
http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/E
rikson.htm
– Generativity vs. stagnation
• Bringing to fruition our goals (productivity and
creativity) or becoming anxious, dull, conformist
and resentful
• Importance of resolving crises of previous stages
Adulthood and Death
• Carl Gustav Jung: Modern Man in Search of a
Soul (1933)
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/jung.htm
– Moving from ego to the essence of self
• Our values more directed inward
• Psychological growth, realization of our human potential,
spirituality is refined
– Mid-life crisis
• Cognitive evaluation of our life choices and patterns, self-
examination possibly leading to questioning, criticism and
rejection of our current life-style and values
• Challenge of overcoming our fear of death is central to it
Fear of Death
• Peak of fear and worry over death and
dying occurs during the central years of
adulthood (between 35 and 60)
• Greater fear associated with
– Loneliness
– Stagnation
– Despair in adulthood
– Experience with death of a loved one
• Death of a parent
– A powerful and symbolic life event hat strips away any past illusions
of immortality
– Developmental push – forces us to face the fact of our own
mortality
– High and low-intensity grief
• Death of a spouse
– Particularly difficult during the early and middle adult years (older
widows and widowers seem to adjust better)
– The broken heart phenomenon – widows and widowers are more
likely to die within a year or two following the death of a beloved
spouse
• Death of an animal companion
– Grief that can be as intense as grieving a loss of a close human
being
– Experiences of searching behavior after the death of a pet
– Missing the unique qualities of the animal
The Death of a Child
• Our child brings powerful and profound
forms of meaning to our lives
• A Child’s sudden Death
– Accidents
• PTSD in parents, survivor guilt, blame by the
family, accidents seen as preventable
– Murder
• Majority of murders committed by relative, friends,
or acquaintances – complication to grief
• Grief also complicated by the legal system
procedures
A Child’s Anticipated Death
• Anticipatory grief (the grief experienced prior to a death)
– Acknowledgement
• Realizing the inevitability of the child’s death
– Grieving
• Emotional expressiveness that diminishes in the course of child’s
dying
– Reconciliation
• Working towards acceptable interpretation of the death, often in
religious and spiritual terms
– Detachment from the parent-child bond
• May lead to disinterest toward the child if this phase is experienced
before the child dies
– Memorialization
• Positive characterizations of the child are solidified into parent’s
inner representation of the dead child
Fetal, Neonatal,
and Postneonatal Death
• Fetal Death
– Stillbirth – fetal death btw 20th week of
gestation and the time of birth
• Neonatal Death
– Death during the first 4 weeks following birth
• Postneonatal Death
– 4 weeks and up to 11 months following birth
• Stillbirth
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May be unexpected, often sudden
Mothers can sense there is something wrong
Cause of the death may be difficult to ascertain
Majority of mothers are anxious to see their babies, to
touch, hold, name them, and take part in the
arrangements for the burial
• Neonatal Death
– babies from unwanted pregnancies (as expressed by
the mother during the first trimester) are more than
twice as likely to die than those from wanted
pregnancies
– Sadness, depression and anger predominant in the
reaction of the mother; father often taking on the role
of protector and nurturer of the grieving mother
Abortion
• Spontaneous Abortion
– 20% of all pregnancies (3/4 before 12 weeks)
– Significant grief reaction immediately, or delayed until
the date when the baby would have been born
– Often complicated by the fact that there are no remains
to be buried and no funeral to acknowledge the loss
• Induced Abortion
– Women’s grief and morning pattern similar to that for
spontaneous abortion
– Cognitive denial and emotional repression of the loss
are much more likely, sometimes anger towards the self
– Under some circumstances (saving mother’s life, China)
the grief response might be limited
Phases of Parental Mourning
• Parental grief is considered the most
•
inconsolable, incurable of any kind of grief
Facts about grief reactions to death of a child in
families (Littlefield & Rushton, 1986):
– Mothers grieve more than fathers
– Healthy children are grieved more than unhealthy
children
– Maternal grandmothers grieve more than other
grandparents
– Parental despair and depression are profound and
long-lasting
The Cognitive Restructuring Phase
• Death of a child viewed as untimely and unnatural
interruption of the normal life course
• Initial reaction marked by disbelief
• Feelings over the first few days or weeks
– Fear of going insane
– Sensations of whirling around, pressure in the head, heartache,
stomach pain
– Sadness, profuse weeping, sighing, insomnia, restlessness
– Period of account making
• Shadow grief
– Unresolved grief that becomes part of the parent’s sense of self
and their existence
– Manifests as a consequence of freezing in cognitive denial,
repression and passivity
The Emotional Expression Phase
• Anger and blame towards hospital personnel, the
•
other parent or others who may have contributed
to the death
Survival guilt
– ‘Better I should have died than my child’
• Death-causation guilt
– Parent believes that he/she directly or indirectly caused
the death
• Cultural role guilt
– Belief that they did not fulfill their role as parents
• Grief guilt
– Parent’s belief that he/she failed to grieve correctly or to
behave appropriately as a grieving parent
The Emotional Expression Phase
• Gender differences
– Mothers manifesting more depression than father who
take on the responsibility for managing the grief of the
family
– Men more likely to hide their distress (less likelihood to
diagnose depression in a truly depressed man than in
equally depressed woman)
– Problems in marital relationship
• Husbands frustrated about the intensity and duration of their
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wives’ emotional expression
Wives angry over their husbands’ not sharing grief feelings
Temporary breakdowns in communication
Loss of sexual intimacy
General irritability between spouses
The Psychological Reintegration
Phase
• Coping with the actual loss
– New goals, aspirations, regaining self-confidence and self-esteem,
optimism and hope
• Coping with the symbolic loss (hope for the future, a part
of the self)
– Memorialization of the virtues of the dead child into the parent’s
own sense-of-self
• Disenfranchised grief
– Loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly
mourned, or socially supported (ex-spouses, former friends,
homosexual partners, foster parents, etc.)
– Often applies to prenatal and neonatal loss
• Parental support
– Support groups useful if combined with moving beyond grief work
into deeper and longer-lasting work of mourning
The Psychospiritual Transformation
Phase
• Unique and sacred bond between parent and a child
– Other human relationships are contractual and can be abandoned
– Pledge to love and care not contingent on reciprocal behavior
– Sacred bond as with religious obligations to God or higher
principle, or to abstract principles of goodness
• Spiritual justifications of the child’s loss often include but
are more complex than:
– Reunion in heaven in the future
– Reverence – inspiration for parents to do good works
– Retribution – punishment for sins of the parent
• Profound psycho-spiritual transformations
– Integral part of the healing process
– Reinterpretation of previous religious and spiritual beliefs
– Dramatic transformation of the sense-of-self and assumptions
about the world, new religious and spiritual beliefs