The general aim of this proposed research is to examine the effect of elderly parents' deaths on the lives of their middle-aged children. The experience of parental death in middle-age is increasingly normative, but has received minimal attention. In particular, we will examine the effects on both middle aged sons [Ss] and daughters [Ds] of the loss of an elderly parent (mother[M] or father [F]) who is their last surviving parent. The central focus in this qualitative, ethnographically based study will be the personal meaning of the parental death and the subjective perception and interpretation of this event. Interviews will be held 4 to 7 months after the parental death with the sample drawn randomly from death records and will include a highly focused set of open-ended questions and prompts and a set of standard items. This represents, as far as we are aware, a unique application of qualitative interview research to a community based random sample. The proposed 36-month study has three specific aims. 1. We will examine the personal meaning and experience of the parent's death by both sons and daughters, employing primarily qualitative research methods. 2. We will examine the differential effects on middle aged children of distinctive circumstances prior to elder parental death. Three groups of informants (each N=100, total = 300) will consist of local middle aged children who: 1) were involved in heavy caregiving for their parent; 2) had a parent in a nursing home during the last year of her life; or 3) were involved in light or no caregiving. Each group will have an equal number of each of 4 parent-child dyads: D-M, D-F, S-M, and S-F. 3. We will examine the death of the parent both as a loss and as a life-course transition. We will focus on the personal meaning and experience of parental death as it concerns (1) the self; (2) family and spouse; and (3) the past and continuing relationship with the parent. The proposed research may moreover be considered a """"""""post-caregiving""""""""study for a subsample of informants.
| Smith, Sharon Hines (2005) Anticipatory grief and psychological adjustment to grieving in middle-aged children. Am J Hosp Palliat Care 22:283-6 |
| Smith, Sharon Hines (2002) ""Fret no more my child ... for I'm all over heaven all day"": religious beliefs in the bereavement of African American, middle-aged daughters coping with the death of an elderly mother. Death Stud 26:309-23 |
| Rubinstein, R L (1995) Narratives of elder parental death: a structural and cultural analysis. Med Anthropol Q 9:257-76 |
