Parenting After the Death of a Child
A Practitioner's Guide
Routledge – 2011 – 226 pages
The death of a child has a tremendous and overwhelming impact on parents and siblings, completely altering the psychological landscape of the family. In the aftermath of such a tragedy, parents face the challenge of not only dealing with their own grief, but also that of their surviving children. How can someone attempt to cease parenting a deceased child while maintaining this role with his/her other children? Is it possible for a mother or father to effectively deal with feelings of grief and loss while simultaneously helping their surviving children?
Parenting After the Death of a Child: A Practitioner’s Guide addresses this complex and daunting dilemma. Following on the heels of a qualitative research study that involved interviewing bereaved parents, both fathers and mothers, Buckle and Fleming have put together several different stories of loss and recovery to create an invaluable resource for clinicians, students, and grieving parents. The authors present the experience of losing a child and its subsequent impact on a family in a novel and effective way, demonstrating the strength and importance of their book for the counseling field.
"In this research based book, Buckle and Fleming let bereaved parents tell their own stories of struggling with the many losses that a child’s death can bring and how they coped as they moved toward "regeneration." This book offers help and hope for bereaved families and is a must read for caregivers to whom these families turn for care and comfort." - J. William Worden, PhD, ABPP, Author of Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy and Children & Death: When a Parent Dies
"This is a wonderful gift to clinicians and bereaved families, and a major contribution to the study of bereaved parents. Based on grounded research, the authors, well experienced clinicians themselves, offer solid theory and well supported interventions to sensitize counselors to the issues faced by bereaved parents as they continue to parent their other children." - Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, Professor, The College of New Rochelle; Senior Consultant, The Hospice Foundation of America
"Buckle and Fleming have made an important contribution to the underdeveloped literature on parenting after the death of a child. This book should be in the library of anyone who works with bereaved parents." - Stephen R. Connor, PhD, Senior Research and International Consultant, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, USA
"The authors clearly and compassionately explore the experience of a parent having to deal with [continuing to be parents to their remaining children, whilst grieving the death of their child], and try to identify particular themes from their extensive interviews…a thorough and detailed piece of research, and its analysis is clearly expressed… I would recommend it to anyone who is likely to come into contact with parents, such as social workers, teachers, youth workers and counsellors." - Counseling Children and Young People
Setting the Stage: Impact of the Death of a Child on Parents. Discovering the Theory of Bereaved Parenting: Method, Participants, Overview of Results. Part I: Devastation. The Devastation of Parental Bereavement. Part II: Regeneration. Picking Up the Pieces: Regeneration of Self. Picking Up the Pieces: Regeneration of Family. Part III: Parenting. Dual Tasks of Parenting and Grieving. Control. Parenting Bereaved Children. Implications and Future Directions.