How parents who have lost a child experience continuing to parent their remaining children

What is it about?

The death of a child can be one of the most devastating experiences for parents, which can result in a unique and enduring grief. Parents with surviving children face the task of navigating their own grief while continuing to parent. This narrative inquiry explores bereaved parents’ stories of their emotional relationship with their surviving children. Parents told stories of emotional connection and disconnection with surviving children, influenced by the competing and potentially incompatible tasks of ‘parenting’ and ‘grieving’.

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Why is it important?

The importance of focusing on relationships when we support bereaved parents and when we conduct research about bereavement is highlighted. The findings demonstrate the need for practitioners to provide i) parents an opportunity to explore their sometimes contradicting and troubling experiences of grief and parenting, acknowledging and validating these experiences and supporting parents in managing these; and ii) children with support to make sense of their experiences in relation to the parent-child relationship.