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How Early Parental Loss Affects Children
What do we know about the impact of early parental loss? About five percent of young people lose a parent before reaching adulthood. Early parental loss is associated with negative outcomes including anxiety; depression; prolonged grief reactions; negative effect on sense of self; increased risk for suicide, substance abuse, and eating problems; difficulty with executive function; reduced quality of life; and changes to how survivors approach adult relationships [1].
Hard-won, resilience and wisdom may take root in the fertile soil of misfortune. Having lived through the world-shattering, apocalyptic experience of losing a parent when I was young, I regard research in this area of personal interest as well as important, instructive about how to grieve and go on living after loss and how to advocate for children who are coping with parental loss but may not have needed resources to get through it and live healthy, full lives.
Survivor Stories
Recent work published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2022) took a qualitative approach to draw out important lessons we can learn from people who experienced the death of a parent before reaching adulthood. Researchers conducted in-depth semistructured interviews with eight women and six men, now adults, who’d lost a parent at least…
