Child Off-Script: A Qualitative Study on Childhood Bereavement (original) (raw)

This qualitative study sought to describe the experiences of five male and five female individuals who have experienced bereavement before reaching the age of 18, experiencing the loss of a parent between the age of 4 to 17. The participants’ lived experiences and their worldviews were the principal factors explored. Additionally, factors such as their attributions and coping mechanisms were considered. The following dominant themes were identified: the need for an immediate maturity, impairment in tackling significant life events resulting from their parent’s absence, observed gender differences in coping, and their positive worldviews. Their shared positive appraisal constituted the suggested theory, referred to by the researchers in this study as Affirmative Response Action Theory. The theory proposed described how the participants in this study took positive action as a response to grief from the early loss of a parent, not only in affirming the consequences of the death itself, but also of the need for their immediate maturity and accepting a sense of responsibility for the loss, all of which were done in a resilient fashion.