A Thematic Co-Occurrence Analysis of Communal Coping Within and Between Surviving Parents and Emerging-Adult Children After Partner/Parental Death

Parents

Parents typically described two actions reflecting individual coping: (a) maintaining a personal connection with their deceased partner, and (b) engaging in comforting activities. Strategies for maintaining connection involved talking out loud to the partner, journaling, doing activities that their partner enjoyed, or physically holding onto something that belonged to their partner. A father described how when he is alone at night he will “sit on my bed and hold on to some of my wife’s clothes. I just hug them and smell them. I don’t ever want to forget that smell” (parent #6, father, age 40, 13 months since partner death). For parents coping by trying to maintain a connection with their deceased partner, many emphasized that they were trying to not forget their partner, which helped them to at least manage the grieving process, even if they could not yet move forward in their life.

Parents also enacted individual coping by engaging in activities that brought them comfort or joy. For some, these activities included turning to religion or scheduling events that they could look forward to. One parent described:

I’m very spiritual…I attend church every Sunday and Bible study on Wednesdays…This process is a roller coaster of emotions and feelings. I tend to breakdown when I’m alone. Being an only child leaves me very few shoulders to lean on. In search of support groups currently (parent #38, mother, age 34, 34 months since partner death).

By scheduling or incorporating enjoyable activities into their day, parents felt a sense of reprieve from their grief that allowed them to manage their feelings and grief.

Children

When the emerging-adult children enacted individual coping, they often described two behaviors: (a) maintaining a personal connection with their deceased parent, and (b) compartmentalizing or engaging in distractions. Similar to parents, a common coping behavior reported by children involved individually maintaining a connection with their deceased parent. Some children enacted individual coping because their surviving parent would not talk with them about the other parent’s death, such as one child who said:

We didn't do anything together, or even talk about my mom to each other. But privately every night I look at my pictures of my mom, or of us together, and a couple nights a week I break down and cry alone in my room because I miss her so much, my dad doesn't know that (child #6, female, age 17, deceased mother, 13 months since parent death).

As reflected in this response, many children felt they had to maintain a connection individually because they were not able to talk about their deceased parent with the surviving parent.

A second individual coping strategy utilized by children was compartmentalizing or seeking distractions from their thoughts and emotions. One child expressed this when they said: “I just live life and try not to think about it. I go by my days on my own and just strive to be the best version of myself to try and make him proud” (child #9, male, age 18, deceased father, seven months since parent death). For many children, compartmentalizing helped them make it through life in the absence of their parent, even if they were not actively engaging in communication to cope with their feelings.

Parents

Parents enacted individual help and support provision in two ways: (a) having honest conversations with their children about the death without necessarily acting on them, and (b) engaging in activities to distract or comfort their child. Several parents described having open and honest conversation with children about the death of their parent (reflecting high shared appraisals), but not actively engaging in behaviors to address how the child(ren) were feeling (reflecting low joint action). A parent illustrates this concept in her response, describing how “to help us cope with stressful things, we talk about things and try to distract ourselves with a fun activity” (parent #37, mother, age 36, 20 months since partner death). This parent reports high shared appraisal of needing to manage “stressful things” with their child, but limited dyad-level joint action because the behavior described is shared distraction/mood repair and the response does not indicate coordinated coping efforts directed toward managing bereavement (e.g., joint processing, meaning-making, or problem-solving related to the death).

The second way parents enacted individual help and support provision was through engaging in fun or enjoyable activities with their child to distract from their sadness. Parents who enacted this strategy described how engaging in purposeful activities to help their children feel better also improved their own stress. For example, one parent said, “I just shop ALOT when I am not feeling well or I’m depressed and I like to spoil my daughter as well, like that will take the pain away or something” (parent #44, mother, age 40, ten months since partner death). Similar to the above response, this parent perceives a higher level of shared appraisal that she and her daughter are both in pain, but low levels of joint action because the coping response is primarily unilateral (shopping/spending as her strategy) and is described as relief-oriented rather than a coordinated dyadic effort to manage bereavement.

Children

Children similarly enacted individual help and support provision by engaging in activities with their parent to “take their mind off things” rather than taking direct action to address stressors tied to bereavement. One child reported that she and her father went:

shopping at the mall which we almost never do. We also went rock climbing - honestly, I was really surprised and impressed that my dad could climb so many routes. We didn't talk much about my mom's death, but honestly I didn't want to bring anything up being it was the first time since the funeral that my dad seemed a little happy and not so depressed (child #27, female, age 16, deceased mother, one month since parent death).

By doing activities with their parent to help get their mind off the deceased parent, children are providing indirect support in light of shared grief, but avoiding conversations in which they could collectively work toward resolving the stressor.

Parents

Parents engaged in help and support seeking by (a) talking or spending time with their children, and (b) relying on external support networks. Talking and spending time together reflect joint action by enacting conversations that can support one another’s well-being and ability to cope, but there is little recognition that stressors associated with bereavement are shared by both parent and the child. For example, one parent noted, “He calls me on his walks; we discussed his mid-terms and how he is going to handle studying for them and getting stressed” (parent #7, mother, age 51, 18 months since partner death). In this response, the parent is not seeking explicit support from their child, but finds comfort in maintaining a routine connection. This maintenance helps the parent to manage her grief by staying engaged in her child’s life and maintaining a sense of normalcy amid profound change.

Parents also enacted help and support seeking by relying on external support networks, such as friends, family members, or support groups. We coded this as high joint action because the coping involved coordinated interaction with others (friends/family/support groups) aimed at reducing stress; however, this joint action occurred outside the parent–child dyad. One participant described scheduling events with her friends as a form of coping: “I do yoga with my friends two or three times a week to spend time with my friends and relax and have fun. This takes my mind off of the stress in my head and in my house” (parent #1, mother, age 47, 16 months since partner death). This example illustrates how parents often turned to external networks and group activities as a way of seeking connection and enjoyment with others to distract from the grief they felt.

Children

Children engaged in help and support seeking by (a) seeking support from their parent to feel better about the death of their other parent, and (b) relying on external support networks. Many children requested support from their parent to manage stressors associated with bereavement, but few children acknowledged that their parent shared in their grief. Thus, children sought joint action in the form of tangible support behaviors from their parent, but also demonstrated low shared appraisals by focusing only on their own needs in bereavement, which is a defining characteristic of help and support seeking as a coping behavior (Afifi et al., 2020). One child described how they garner support from their parent, stating “My mom gives me warm hugs whenever I need them and when I feel like being hugged, she’s always there to provide one and hot chocolate. Plus I like it when she sings to me” (child #33, male, age 21, deceased father, 31 months since parent death). As shown in this response, there is joint action in the tangible support behaviors provided by the parent, but the child is not perceiving his parent’s equal need for support to manage bereavement.

The second way children engaged in help and support seeking was by relying on external support networks. One child said they engaged in coping when they “spent time with friends and people I love this past week and having good quality time doing things I enjoy” (child #8, female, age 18, deceased father, four months since parent death). For children, relying on support from family and friends reflected network-based joint action (coping in interaction with friends/family) rather than dyad-level joint action with the surviving parent. Because the coping partner was external, these excerpts reflect low shared appraisal within the parent–child dyad.

Parents

Parents engaged in communal coping by: (a) prioritizing quality time with their child, and (b) maintaining a connection with their deceased partner or keeping their memory alive with the child. These two categories of behavior were seen as communal coping because they reflect shared appraisals, meaning parents recognized a need for their child and them to work through their grief together, and exhibit joint action, meaning parents were engaging in purposeful behaviors to address their grief with their child.

For prioritizing quality time, parents described scheduling time or events so they could spend meaningful time with their child to enhance their bond and adapt to living without a second parent. For example, one parent described how she and her child:

go out together and watch a movie sometimes. We also go out and eat together a few times every week. They just want to make sure I am ok, and I feel the same about them. We both try and come up with different types of things to do that will make us feel better and lift our spirits up (parent #34, mother, age 53, 28 months since partner death).

As seen in this response, both dyad members want to confirm the other’s well-being (high shared appraisals because the participant explicitly framed grief as jointly owned) and enact purposeful behaviors to facilitate emotional improvement (high joint action). Thus, spending quality time together allowed for collective bereavement without burdening either party with the sole responsibility of resolving their own or the other’s grief.

Parents also communally coped by maintaining a connection with their deceased partner and working to keep their memory alive with their child. For example, one mother detailed how, during what would have been an important event in her relationship with her husband, she engaged in communal coping with her child to help navigate the emotions of that day:

It would have been our 34th wedding anniversary this past week. One of my husband's favorite foods was Sicilian stuffed artichokes and he would make them several times a year. He was Sicilian and the artichokes were a labor of love. To honor him, I decided to make the attempt at making them myself. To my great surprise, they came out almost as good as his. Our son and daughter said that I did a really good job and they were really close to dad’s. That made me happy. I try to keep his memory alive as much as I can (parent #13, mother, age 57, 32 months since partner death).

Although the mother prepared the artichokes herself, joint action occurred in the shared commemorative episode around the wedding anniversary. Sharing the food, comparing it to their husband and father’s cooking, and using the meal as a collective way to honor him and keep his memory present reflected coordinated, complementary actions that the family used to cope together.

Maintaining a connection with the deceased partner was important for parents at both the individual and communal level. Given that parents had two relationships with their deceased partner, one as romantic partners and one as co-parents of their children, maintaining a connection with the deceased partner serves as an important form of individual and communal coping. Parents’ efforts to maintain a connection at the communal level punctuates the significance of learning how to sustain a connection as a family, rather than as an individual.

Children

Children engaged in communal coping by: (a) spending purposeful time with their parent to allow for coping to occur, and (b) maintaining a connection with their deceased parent with the surviving parent. These forms of communal coping mirror those described by parents, reflecting a shared sense of responsibility to maintain connections and enactment of collective behaviors to achieve that outcome.

Many children reported that they spent purposeful time with their parent as a form of coping, and to ensure that their parent could also cope without concern for their child’s emotional well-being. For example, one child whose mother died noted how she and her father:

have been talking more here lately about it and I feel more at ease to know how my dad thinks and feels so I can help him, and he can help me. I usually try to start an activity or something with him if I think he is feeling down (child #28, female, age 16, deceased mother, 35 months since parent death).

As shown in this response, the child feels a shared concern for her own and her father’s grief, and they engage in joint action by encouraging open conversation about their feelings and participating in shared activities. Thus, children were intentional about spending time together with their parent (joint action), and they valued this time for allowing them to create shared memories and manage bereavement (shared appraisals).

Children also described maintaining a connection with their deceased parent along with the surviving parent as a form of communal coping. For example, one child noted, “In the past week the way my mom and I have coped with the loss of my dad has mostly been poking fun at him, or just talking about fond memories of him. It makes it easier to cope with” (child #13, female, age 21, deceased father, 32 months since parent death). For this child, there was not one event that served as communal coping, but rather incorporating their deceased parent’s memory into everyday interactions allowed them to experience communal coping. Children recognized that these mundane acts of remembrance promoted positive feelings and outcomes for themselves and their parent that made navigating grief a little less challenging.

Individual Coping With Help and Support Seeking

The first co-occurrence observed for both parents and children was between the themes of individual coping and help and support seeking. One mother’s response reflects individual coping behaviors she engaged in independently and help and support seeking behaviors she enacted with others:

I participated in therapy with a therapist. I exercise. I walk. I read and listen to audio books. I talk with my friends and my family, I go out with my friends for lunch or dinner. I try not to be alone too much. With my son, we talk on the phone and text. And we share funny reels through social media. We are very similar. He likes to go for walks too and he calls me during his walks and that is usually when we connect. He is never a bother to me (parent #7, mother, age 51, 18 months since partner death).

This example illustrates how individual coping is often complemented by external forms of social support. Individual coping allows parents to work through their grief, while help and support seeking allows them to rely on others for joint action to facilitate coping without having to navigate shared appraisals and co-management of grief and death-associated stressors.

Whereas this pattern for parents reflected help and support seeking complimenting individual coping, many children indicated they had to engage in individual coping because bids for help and support from their parents were not addressed. For example, one child described: “I watch movies with my mom, but we really never talk about the loss of my dad. How I deal with things is by just not thinking about them and going to the gym” (child #9, male, age 18, deceased father, seven months since parent death). For this child, watching movies together was a form of help and support seeking, as the child is attempting to spend quality time with the parent as a source of comfort (high joint action), but the parent and child do not talk about the death (low shared appraisals) in a way that the child would find helpful. Therefore, the child goes to the gym to avoid thinking about their father’s death (individual coping).

Individual Coping With Communal Coping

The second co-occurrence between themes for both parents and children reflected a relationship between individual coping and communal coping. One parent’s response reveals this pattern, describing how they enact communal coping with their child, but also how they have learned to cope by themselves.

My son and I have learned that when waves of grief hit us, we talk about it. We have moments when something happens that we tear up because we wish his dad was here to see it. This week for instance, he started welding classes. His dad would have been very proud of him for that. Actions that I take individually to cope with my loss are, prayer and Bible studies. I try to stay active, by getting out of the house. I sleep in my recliner still, because it's too hard to sleep alone after 24 years. But I hope to overcome this (parent #16, mother, age 57, 31 months since partner death).

The pairing of individual coping and communal coping potentially occurred given that communal coping can be very difficult to enact and requires continuously purposeful communication (Afifi et al., 2020). During bereavement when emotions are heightened, communal coping may be beneficial, but parents may also want an escape from continually having to engage in purposeful behaviors with their children, so individual coping gives them a reprieve and a chance to process feelings and emotions on their own.

Similar to parents, this pattern illustrates that when children enacted communal coping, they also frequently enacted individual coping, but not necessarily vice versa. For many children, communal coping was described as something that was done in addition to individual coping, rather than something that was done to relieve the burden associated with individual coping. This pattern is reflected in the following response:

I have taken an interest to baking and at times I stress bake when I feel overwhelmed. Together we engage in outdoor activities like hiking at least twice in a month sometimes even weekly because dad was pretty outdoorsy. It sort of helps us feel connected to him (child #4, female, age 17, deceased father, 14 months since parent death).

As demonstrated above, children identified activities that they like doing on their own that help them [individual coping], but also described actions taken with their parent to share in coping with stressors associated with bereavement [communal coping].