Sidney Z. Moss

The Impact of Parental Death on Middle Aged Children

There has been a paucity of literature dealing with the impact of the death of a parent upon a middle-aged child, and a number of reasons for this are explored. The quality of the bond between adult children and their parents is examined, focusing on those aspects which tend to strengthen or weaken this tie. Reaction to parental death involves the dialectic between the persistence and breaking of the bond and between the themes of finitude and personal growth. A lifelong theme of anticipatory orphanhood may help to prepare for the impact of parental death.

Impact of the Death of an Adult Child on Elderly Parents: Some Observations.

The impact of the death of an adult child on elderly parents has received little attention. Yet, findings indicate that 10 percent of all elderly parents had a child die after the parent was age sixty. Five generic themes evoked by the death of a child are explored: untimeliness, uniqueness of the parent-child bond, impact on intergenerational relations, loss of social supports, and hope for the future. Implications for research, clinical intervention, and planning are outlined.

The Role of Gender in Middle-Age Children's Responses to Parent Death

The impact of the deaths of the last surviving elderly parent of 212 middle-aged children was studied. Daughters expressed more emotional upset, somatic response, and continuing tie with the deceased parent than sons; sons reported more acceptance of the death than daughters. The childs gender was not associated with a sense of personal finitude or control of grief. When we control in regressions for characteristics of the parent, the child, and the quality of their relationship, childs gender continued to add significantly to the bereavement outcomes above.

The social context of grief among adult daughters who have lost a parent

Abstract The interface between grief, an intrapsychic and behavioral response to bereavement, and mourning, a process involving the social and cultural prescriptions for the expression of grief, has seldom been examined. Using data from a qualitative study on the effects of an elderly parent s death on adult daughters, this paper provides evidence that grief and mourning influence each other. Individual response to loss can be understood by examining interwoven intrapsychic and socially evaluative domains. Individuals struggling to incorporate these two, sometimes conflicting, dimensions may in part make choices in their own experiences of and responses to bereavement. This paper suggests that the internal debate involved in balancing personal and cultural forces not only leads to control of the expression of grief, but molds the intrapsychic experience of grief as well. For example, the need to control grief both serves to shape and contain it, and assists in maintaining an enduring tie with the deceased elderly parent.

Some aspects of the elderly widow(er)'s persistent tie with the deceased spouse

An elderly widow(er) often carries deep attachments to the deceased spouse. Elements of grief persist over many years. In spite of the loss, separation, and grief, five themes of the marital tie continue throughout widowhood: caring–an affirmation of continuing affection; intimacy–a unique sharing and sense of mutual importance; family feeling–a deep sense of biological kinship and bondedness; commitment–intended continuity of the relationship; and reciprocal identity support–each is defined and confirmed by the other. A sense of home is also a mechanism in maintaining the bond. These themes may persist to provide continuing comfort and support to the widow(er).

Themes in parent-child relationships when elderly parents move nearby

Abstract Understanding the meaning of the move of an elderly parent to live near a child can throw light on the quality of their relationship. The impact of the relocation on five interrelated aspects of the tie are examined: association (frequency and context of interaction), positive and negative affect (which occur together in complex patterns), intimacy (communication of personal concerns), consensus (degree of congruence in values) and interdependence (emphasizing both autonomy and dependency). The parents move involves both stability and change. As a transition it highlights some unexplored aspects of the tie suggesting directions for future research.

Middle-Aged Son's Reactions to Father's Death

This article concerns the domain of mens grief and bereavement. It reports on findings from a research project in which we qualitatively interviewed, in a 2 × 2 design, middle-aged sons and daughters concerning the meaning of the death of their widowed elderly mother or father. We interviewed forty-three sons who recently experienced the death of their widowed father. We suggest that the normative model of bereavement is feminized and does not adequately account for mens experiences. In the domain of bereavement, men are often “the other.” We outline and discuss four themes in mens bereavement: control, action, cognition, and privacy.

Faith and End of Life in Nursing Homes

This paper explores the role of religious belief in the experiences of dying and death in a Catholic nursing home. The home appeals to residents and their families due to the active religious presence. Thus, religion is a salient element of the “local culture” which exists in this long-term care setting. The preeminence of faith within the organization and the personal religious convictions of staff, residents, and families may drive how death and dying are discussed and experienced in this setting, as well as the meanings that are attached to them. This paper examines the relationship between faith and the experience and meaning of death in this nursing home. We present themes that emerged from open-ended interviews with residents, family members, and staff, gathered between 1996 and 2004. The data indicate that people select the home due to their Catholic faith and the homes religious tone. Themes also show that belief in God and an afterlife helps shape the experience of dying and death for our informants. Our paper does not compare ease of dying with other nursing homes or within other belief systems.

End of life: a family narrative.

This paper is based on ethnographic research that examines family reaction to an elderly husband and fathers end of life. From a group of 30 families in our study (family defined as a widow aged 70 and over and two adult biological children between the ages of 40 and 60), we offer an extreme case example of family bereavement. We report our findings through the open-ended responses of a widow and two children who were interviewed ten months after the death of the husband and father. Three general themes emerged: (1) how the family imputes meaning to the end of life, (2) changes in the roles of family members, and (3) the familys ways of coping with the death, particularly through their belief system. A key finding is that the meaning family members find in their loved ones death is tied to the context of his death (how and where he died), their perception of his quality of life as a whole, and their philosophical, religious, and spiritual beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife that are already in place.

Mental illness, partial hospitalization, and the family

SummaryWhen illness is socially defined, the task of therapy is to enable the patient to move from a sick role to one of maximal social functioning. In a day hospital setting, methods are explored to involve a patient with his family both directly and indirectly. Thus the patient is supported both in the treatment milieu and when he is at home. Not only the patient, but the family, is vulnerable at this time and each must be helped to make parallel and complementary shifts in interpersonal behavior. To view the family solely as a resource for the support of the ill member and his treatment is to fail to accept the need of the family as a whole for reorganization and strengthening.