Abstract
The aim of this study was to explore how older orphans in youth-headed households (YHHs) experience and respond to maternal death and to examine the strategies they employ to care for their younger siblings. We interviewed 18 older orphans who were purposively selected from YHHs located in informal settlements in the City of Tshwane, South Africa. After the death of their mothers, the orphans lost the family home, lost support from their relatives, lost friendships, lost educational opportunities, and lost childhood. The orphans experienced prolonged pain, sadness, anxieties, fear, loneliness despondency, and deep-rooted and persistent anger towards their mother for dying. They suffered from prolonged bereavement because they had been denied the opportunity to mourn the loss of their parents and yearned persistently but silently for their dead mothers. Dropping out of school to seek employment in order to care for their siblings was one of the main coping strategies that older orphans used. However, dropping out of school early robbed them of their future goals of getting an educational qualification. The orphans had not been prepared for taking on an adult role and were given no support or counselling to help them recover from their parents’ death. Continuous grief counselling should form an integral component of the psychosocial support services that are provided to orphans soon after the death of a parent.
Highlights
The loss of a mother through death is multifaceted and has multiple potential negative effects for children [1,2], but these effects may not manifest until many months or years afterwards [3].Research suggests that the loss of a parent to an AIDS-related illness carries more risk factors than any other type of bereavement [2,4]
Children orphaned and rendered vulnerable by HIV and AIDS are at high risk of living in child-headed households (CHHs), a phenomenon that has emerged with the scourge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in many societies [11]
We explored how older orphans in youth-headed households (YHHs) experience and respond to maternal death and examined the strategies they employ to care for their younger siblings
Summary
Research suggests that the loss of a parent to an AIDS-related illness carries more risk factors than any other type of bereavement [2,4]. Such an effect may be psychological, behavioral, educational, economic, and damaging to the child’s health and may lead to uncertainty about their future [2,5,6,7,8]. Children orphaned and rendered vulnerable by HIV and AIDS are at high risk of living in child-headed households (CHHs), a phenomenon that has emerged with the scourge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in many societies [11]. The phenomenon is more noticeable following the loss of multiple family members, the grandmother who is Healthcare 2020, 8, 259; doi:10.3390/healthcare8030259 www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare
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