Do Social Timing and Gender Matter to Parental Depression Aroused by Traumatic Experience of Child Bereavement? Evidence from China.

Dan Chen,Yuying Tong

doi:10.3390/ijerph182212058

Abstract

Child loss is a rare but traumatic life event that often has a detrimental effect on parental wellbeing. However, parents’ resources and strategies in coping with the stressful child bereavement event may depend on timing of the event. This study intends to examine how parental depression could be aroused by the occurrence and timing of child bereavement, and how the influences vary by child gender. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the stress and life course, and using three waves of data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we find that both the occurrence and timing of child bereavement are significantly associated with parental depression in later life. Bereaved parents are more likely to report depression than non-bereaved parents. Child bereavement in children’s young adulthood is more likely to spark off parental depression than that occurring in children’s midlife or later. Further analysis confirms that the timing effect of child bereavement differs by child gender. Parents whose son died during young adulthood are more likely to report depression than their counterparts whose daughter died. Future studies need to address how to build up a specific social welfare program targeting child bereavement groups in different life stages.

Highlights

In the wave 2011, 2130 respondents were deleted for missing values in depression score, and 77 respondents were deleted for missing values in childhood self-rated health, self-rated health, education and household registration status
38% died before adulthood, 40% died in young adulthood, and 22% died in middle and late adulthood
The more severe influence on parents when the death occurs in children’s young adulthood than later adulthood suggests that parents’ grief over a child’s death is more about lineage continuities in family roles, rather than for practical concern about support from children and life securities in later life. This finding points to policy implications for government and social organizations in building up specific social welfare programs that should provide both resources and trained social workers to help people at different life stages to manage the stress associated with child loss

Summary

Introduction

According to the stress process perspective, the wellbeing inequalities in ageing process could be contributed by stressors (i.e., negative life events) in earlier lives [6]. Child loss is one of the most traumatic life events for parents [7]. Bereaved parents often suffer negative emotions (e.g., sadness, detachment, guilt, and loss of control) [8]. To what extent the bereavement event could be a chronic life stressor may be affected by the preloss dependence, resilience with pre-loss acceptance of death [9], loss-oriented model or problem-focused model [10], and construction of meaning [11]. Gender, lack of social support, poor financial or health problem, time since loss may be important predictors of the bereavement outcome [12].

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