Grieving the loss of a child in times of COVID-19
Bereavement; Parents; Family Members; Couples; Grief; COVID-19; Pandemics; Child Loss
Given the massive influences of COVID-19 restrictions on people in nearly all nations, we conducted an in-depth qualitative study of 15 Belgian parents who had lost a child prior to the pandemic in order to understand its impact on their ongoing bereavement. Analysis of focus group sessions and couples interviews distinguished between experiences related to the pandemic and those related to resulting governmental restrictions (e.g., lockdown, social distancing). We theoretically framed our findings in terms of the dual processes of orienting to loss versus restoring life, reconstructing meaning in bereavement, and relationally attuning as a couple to a shared loss. We found that the COVID period accentuated all losses, awakening the parents’ grief for their own loss and their empathy for others. At the same time, they experienced limited opportunities for restoration-oriented distraction through connection with familiar activities and relationships beyond the family. Control or choice in this process of oscillation between orienting to grief versus ongoing life was impaired by the pandemic, as parents struggled to find a new dynamic balance to compensate for the risk of continuous engagement with reminders of their loss. Most notable was their close proximity as a couple, while being at a greater distance from the social network. The continuous attunement process between partners and family members played out in a process of drawing close and interposing distance, of grieving apart and together, of talking about grief and holding silence. We close by reflecting on the implications of our findings for clinical practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Hooghe A; Claeys A; Thompson B; Neimeyer RA; Rober P
Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice
2021
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
<a href="http://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000180" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10.1037/cfp0000180</a>
"we Hardly Ever Talk About It": Emotional Responsive Attunement In Couples After A Child's Death
Within Western cultural traditions, the idea that parents should talk about the death of their child with each other is deeply rooted. However, across bereaved parent couples there are wide variations in communication about their grief with each other. In this study, we explored the experiences of bereaved couples related to the process of talking and not talking. We used a thematic coding approach to analyze 20 interviews with 26 bereaved parents (11 interviewed as couples, four as individuals). Four main meanings emerged out of our analysis: not talking because of the inadequacy and pointlessness of words in grief, not talking as a way to regulate emotions in daily life, not talking as an expression of a personal, intimate process, and not talking because the partner has the same loss but a different grief process. In addition, we found that the process of talking and not talking can partly be understood as an emotional responsive process on an intrapersonal and interpersonal level. In this process partners search for a bearable distance from their own grief and their partner's, and attune with their relational context. A better understanding of this process is sought in a dialectical approach, emphasizing the value of both talking and not talking in a tense relationship with each other. Implications for clinical work are described.
Hooghe A; Rosenblatt PC; Rober P
Fam Process
2017
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).