When a child dies: the sociobiology of bereavement

According to modern evolutionary theory, the fitness of individuals consists of both their personal reproductive success and the reproductive success of those with whom they share genes in common. It follows that one of the most biologically costly events possible is the death of a child. This study investigated the grief intensity of bereaved parents and their immediate families using ratings made by 263 bereaved parents. Predictions were derived from sociobiological tenets relating to parental investment, paternal uncertainty, and the propagation potential of both parents and children. Consequently, it was found that mothers grieved more than fathers, healthy children were grieved for more than unhealthy children; male children were grieved for more than female children; health of child and sex of child interacted such that the pattern of grief intensity obtained was healthy male greater than healthy female = unhealthy female = unhealthy male; similar children were grieved for more than dissimilar children; maternal grandmothers grieved more than either maternal grandfathers or paternal grandmothers, who in turn grieved more than paternal grandfathers; and mothers' siblings grieved more than fathers' siblings.     

Compound-Schedules Approaches to Noncompliance: Teaching Children When to Ask and When to Work

Researchers have demonstrated for practitioners how to use multiple-schedules preparations to thin initially dense schedules of reinforcement during functional communication training, without sacrificing benefits associated with dense schedules of reinforcement for manding. However, special considerations may be required for practitioners to successfully apply this strategy to noncompliance. The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether multiple-schedules preparations could maintain contextually prescribed compliance and manding during interventions for noncompliance. For one participant, a multiple-schedules intervention was sufficient to establish socially valid outcomes. For the other, chained-schedules modifications were required before compliance emerged in relevant components.     

Measuring grief: A short version of the perinatal grief scale

Despite a considerable number of studies, there are two major drawbacks in the literature on grief and bereavement. One is a lack of adequate and generally agreed upon measures for assessing grief. The second is a lack of ability to predict from existing measures the likelihood of what has been termed chronic or pathological grief reactions. This paper reports the results of the development of a bereavement measure for the study of perinatal loss which attempts to address these gaps. The measure is specific to a pregnancy-related loss, although it has the potential for adaptation to use for other types of loss. Analysis of responses from 138 women has resulted in the reduction of the original measure from 104 to a more manageable and almost equally comprehensive and reliable 33 items. In addition, a factor analysis has produced three factors, two of which indicate the possibility for longer-term and more severe grief reactions. Because of its sound psychometric qualities and interesting factor structure, the measure shows promise of being useful for both research and clinical purposes.This research was funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 H18431-04, with additional assistance from the Center for Social Research at Lehigh University. Dr. Potvin is supported by the Quebec Health Research Fund.     

The parent analogy: a reassessment

According to the parent analogy, as a caretaker’s goodness, ability and intelligence increase, the likelihood that the caretaker will make arrangements for the attainment of future goods that are unnoticed or underappreciated by their dependents also increases. Consequently, if this analogy accurately represents our relationship to God, then we should expect to find many instances of inscrutable evil in the world. This argument in support of skeptical theism has recently been criticized by Dougherty. I argue that Dougherty’s argument is incomplete, for there are two plausible ways of construing the parent analogy’s conclusion. I supplement Dougherty’s case by offering a new argument against the parent analogy based on failed expectations concerning the amount of inscrutable evils encountered in the world. Consequently, there remains a significant empirical hurdle for skeptical theism to overcome if it is to maintain its status as a defeater for our reliability when tracking gratuitous evils.     

Perception Versus Knowledge of Cause and Effect in Children: When Seeing Is Believing

Recent research has shown that even infants have perceptual sensitivity to the causal structure of the world, and it is often claimed that causal knowledge supports many of preschoolers' impressive cognitive achievements. That older children nevertheless can encounter difficulties in causal-reasoning tasks is typically attributed to lack of domain knowledge. A different explanation, however, is that causal structure may appear at more than one level, in perception, as well as in underlying knowledge. Children may make some reasoning errors because they have difficulty coordinating these levels. This article reviews relevant evidence on physical causality: Even infants in their first year perceive the causal structure of simple collision events. This perceptual skill could support rapid causal learning without prior knowledge and thus helps us understand children's precocity preschoolers already reason with the assumption that causes and effects are linked by underlying physical mechanisms. However, what may promote early development may later become a hindrance: When perception and mechanism point to different causes, children may not realize that mechanism is superordinate. Although the components of competent causal reasoning are available early in development, much experience may be required before children learn how to integrate them.     

When Respect Means to Obey: Immigrant Mexican Mothers' Values for Their Children

We describe Mexican immigrant mothers' values for their children and their understanding of how children acquire those values. Fifteen mothers were given a Q-Sort task of parental values and interviewed at length using a semi-structured format. Analysis of the mothers' transcribed narratives revealed salient features of a cultural model of child development that constrasts sharply with current professional models. The emergent portrait of children was one of inactive learners whose ability to understand dictated social behavior, developed very slowly over the years, and was dependent on parental direction and instruction.     

Anticipatory grief: The search for destiny

This paper explores the dynamics between a woman dying of cancer, the man she lived with for 37 years, and the clinician who worked with them during the final months of the woman's life. Psychoanalytic perspectives on transformational and transitional object-seeking as natural processes which aid the internalization of attachment to the one who is approaching death, the creation of a primary maternal preoccupation in the caretaker, the hospice as a holding environment, and the search for destiny as a metaphor for the work of anticipatory grief are integrated with the case-material.Presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting,Person, Culture and Religion Pre-session, November, 1991.     

Child mortality and parental grief: An evolutionary analysis

Across most of human history, infant and child mortality rates were very high, suggesting the death of a child was a challenge faced by many ancestral parents. Prolonged grief likely harmed grievers’ fitness, yet grief is ubiquitous and often protracted, thereby presenting a puzzle for evolutionary arguments. We integrate existing theories of grief with patterns of parental bereavement to examine how human psychology has been shaped to respond to the death of a child. We contend that variation in life history strategy may explain the relative difficulty with which individuals recover from losing a child. We propose that the same physiological mechanisms underlying detachment and grief during dissolved romantic relationships may also underlie the intensity of parental attachment and bereavement. This theoretical review thus integrates evolutionary theory with extant grief research to provide a functional analysis of the immense suffering associated with the loss of a child.     

Murder and faith: a reflected case study of pastoral interventions in traumatic grief

Pastoral response to death in the family of a congregate is familiar terrain for most ministers. Pastors are often called upon to pray for the sick, comfort the bereaved, and preside at memorial services and graveside gatherings. While most get some orientation in the work of death and dying in seminary, few are prepared to minister effectively to church members who suffer traumatic bereavement caused by human-perpetrated violence. This paper describes the power of facilitated cathartic narrative, bearing witness, and reflective meaning-making in a case study involving a pastor, his wife, and the grief-stricken widow of a murdered comrade in ministry.