Maternal grief

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to analyse maternal grief and coping with grief following the death of a child aged under 7 years. The aim was to obtain information to understand mothers' grief, in order to support them after the death of their child. Data were collected through surveys (n = 91). The questionnaire used contained an existing grief reactions checklist and open-ended questions. The data were analysed using a two-way analysis of variance, cross-tabulation and content analysis. The results indicate that the mother's grief was associated with the time elapsed since the child's death. The grief was also associated with the mother's age so that older mothers tended to display more grief reactions of a certain kind (detachment and disorganization) than younger mothers. Younger mothers experienced more personal growth than older ones. The child's age at death was associated with more disorganization among mothers if the child had been aged over 1 year at the time of death. The number of children was also associated with the mother's grief. Mothers displayed more detachment if there were other children in the family than if the child had been an only child.