Bereaved Families: A Comparison of Parents' and Grandparents' Reactions to the Death of a Child

Most research has dealt with the bereaved person as an individual and ignored the context in which the person grieves. The occurrence of a death in the family is experienced in various ways, depending on the nature of the relationships within the family. The purpose of this study was to investigate how different family members experience a child's death by comparing the grief reactions of parents and grandparents within the same family. Most parents and grandparents reported subjectively experiencing affective changes in reflecting on the death that did not appear to alter behavior patterns. The majority of parents mentioned that they felt or acted differently toward their surviving children as a result of the death, whereas only one third of the grandparents noted any differences toward their grandchildren. Overall, parents' reactions centered on their deceased child whereas grandparents' concerns focused on their children (i.e., the parents of the deceased child).