A linguistic study of Chinese Weibo users who lost their only child

Abstract

The loss of an only child is one of the most painful life events and creates tremendous change in its parents’ lives. Analyzing parents’ online language use may help to better understand their loss, especially their psychological process. This study compared the online word use of 228 lost-only-child (LOC) parents to that of their peers. We also tracked the change in word use for a subset of these parents (n = 36) quarterly during the first 2 years following their bereavement. The implications of the word use of Chinese LOC parents for mood, parent–child bond, and lifestyle are then discussed.