The Statement of the Problem This research proposes to identify the different effects parental death has on children and the factors (cause of death, age of child, gender of child, gender of surviving parent, etc) that relates to the adjustment of the child to the death of a parent.
Review of Literature
Qualitative Research Hope and Hate (2006) performed a qualitative study to explore the factors that affect children’s adjustment to the death of a parent. The authors of this study reviewed literature and found that many factors contribute to the way children adjust to parental death. Previous research shows that children experience distress related to the loss of a parent. Factor that affect the way a child adjust includes the age of the child, the sex of the child, circumstances of death, relationship to the deceased parent, adjustment to the remaining caregiver, & participation in post death rituals such as funerals. Other studies have compared the adjustment of children who have lost a parent to suicide to those who have lost a parent to terminal illness. Hope and Hodge (2006) conducted this study to obtain insight from social workers who work with childhood grief. They interviewed five social workers asking questions related to the adjustment of children who lost a parent. They focused on the age of children, the sex of children, the circumstances of death (sudden or expected), and adjustment of the current caretaker. They focused on these factors because they found that these were the most common studied but the findings are the most …show more content…
The authors interviewed professional social workers with 11/2 to 22 years of experience working with bereaved children. Age, gender, circumstances of the death, and the adjustment of the caregiver are the factors that was explored. The social workers interviewed had similar observations regarding the factors that affect the adjustments of children who experience the loss of a parent.
McClatchy, I. S., Vonk, M. E., & Palady, G. (2009). The Prevalence of Childhood Traumatic Grief- A Comparison of Violent/Sudden and Expeted Loss. Omega , 59 (4), 305-323. This study compared the prevalence of childhood traumatic grief and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms of those children who lost a parent to violent/sudden death and those children who expected the loss of a parent. There were 158 children that participated in the study. Sixty-three children lost a parent to expected death and 60 percent of the children lost a parent to a sudden or violent death. The incidence of CTG and PTSD did not differ in children who experienced sudden/violent loss of a parent from those who experienced an expected loss.
Ravels, V., Siegal, K., & Karus, D. (1999). Children's Psychological Distress Following the Death of a Parent. Journal of Youth and Adolescence , 28 (2),