Cause of parental death and child's health and education: The role of parental resources

Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist, Sanna; Kotimäki, Sanni

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100632

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Some bereaved children may develop complicated grief and posttraumatic stress, 10 low stress resilience, 11 long-lasting depressive symptoms, 12 a sense of meaninglessness, 10 and high-risk behaviors, 13 leading to lower educational aspiration and achievement, even where university education is free. 5,6,[14][15][16][17] Bereaved children also lose human and social capital provided by the deceased parents, an important resource for child development. 18 Furthermore, grief and mourning of the remaining parent 19 may further reduce parental capacity of support and supervision for the child.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School Outcomes Among Children Following Death of a Parent

et al. 2022

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IMPORTANCETo better support children with the experience of parental death, it is crucial to understand whether parental death increases the risk of adverse school outcomes.OBJECTIVES To examine whether parental death is associated with poorer school outcomes independent of factors unique to the family, and whether children of certain ages are particularly vulnerable to parental death. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSThis population-based sibling cohort study used Swedish national register-based longitudinal data with linkage between family members. Register data were collected from January 1, 1990, to December 31, 2016. Data analyses were performed on July 14, 2021. The participants were all children born between 1991 and 2000 who lived in Sweden before turning age 17 years (N = 908 064). EXPOSURE Parental death before finishing compulsory school. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Mean school grades (year-specific z scores) and ineligibility for upper secondary education on finishing compulsory school at age 15 to 16 years. Population-based cohort analyses were conducted to examine the association between parental death and school outcomes using conventional linear and Poisson regression models, after adjustment for demographic and parental socioeconomic and health indicators measured before childbirth. Second, using fixed-effect linear and Poisson regression models, children who experienced parental death before finishing compulsory school were compared with their siblings who experienced the death after. Third, the study explored the age-specific associations between parental death and school outcomes. RESULTS In the conventional population-based analyses, bereaved children (N = 22 634; 11 553 boys [51.0%]; 11 081 girls [49.0%]; mean [SD] age, 21.0 [2.8] years) had lower mean school grade zscores (adjusted β coefficient, −0.19; 95% CI, −0.21 to −0.18; P < .001) and a higher risk of ineligibility for upper secondary education than the nonbereaved children (adjusted risk ratio, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.32-1.41; P < .001). Within-sibling comparisons using fixed-effects models showed that experiencing parental death before finishing compulsory school was associated with lower mean school grade z scores (−0.06; 95% CI, −0.10 to −0.01; P = .02) but not with ineligibility for upper secondary education (adjusted risk ratio, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.93-1.23; P = .34). Independent of birth order, losing a parent at a younger age was associated with lower grades within a family. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCEIn this cohort study, childhood parental death was associated with lower school grades after adjustment for familial confounders shared between siblings. Children who lost a parent may benefit from additional educational support that could reduce the risk of adverse socioeconomic trajectories later in life.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School Outcomes Among Children Following Death of a Parent

et al. 2022

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“…Parental death was related to second SA without a significant association with first SA (having experienced parental death in childhood was associated with reduced risk of second SA). As this inverse association with second SA was only observed in the multivariate model, when we controlled for other risk factors such as FGRS SA , this might reflect a protective effect from an adverse emotional experience during childhood, though this would need to be supported, for example by considering the cause of death (Calderaro et al, 2022; Kailaheimo-Lonnqvist & Kotimaki, 2020). Finally, although experiencing a child's death is a devastating event, its association with SA was not supported in the multivariate model.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Examining common and distinct contributions to the etiology of suicide attempt and reattempt.

Lannoy

Kendler

Sundquist

et al. 2023

Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science

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This study examined the extent to which the genetic and environmental characteristics of having a first versus a second suicide attempt (SA) are common or specific. We evaluated the direct pathway between these phenotypes and the role of specific risk factors. From Swedish national registries, two subsamples of individuals born between 1960 and 1980 were selected (1,227,287 twin-sibling pairs and 2,265,796 unrelated individuals). First, a twin-sibling model was fit to evaluate the genetic and environmental risk factors related to first and second SA. The model also included a direct path between first and second SA. Second, an extended Cox proportional hazards model (PWP) was used to evaluate the risk factors related to first versus second SA. In the twin-sibling model, suicide reattempt was strongly related to first SA (β = 0.72). The total heritability for the second SA was estimated at 0.48, with 45.80% unique to this second SA. The total environmental influence for the second SA was 0.51, with 50.59% unique. In the PWP model, we found that childhood environment, psychiatric disorders, and selected stressful life events were related to both first and second SA, potentially reflecting common genetic and environmental factors. Other stressful life events were associated with first but not second SA in the multivariable model, suggesting their specificity in explaining the first occurrence of SA but not its recurrence. Specific risk factors related to second SA need to be further explored. These findings have important implications for describing the pathways toward suicidal behavior and identifying individuals at risk for multiple SA.

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“…An intergenerational cycle of poverty and disadvantage is thus perpetuated as families are often left impoverished through catastrophic financial expenditure during cancer care 4 . Orphans are less likely to complete school, more likely to experience poverty, and more likely to have substantial health challenges across their life course than non-orphaned children 7 , 8 , 11 , 13 , 30 . Maternal orphans due to cancer thus need to be tackled within the realm of SDG10 to ‘reduce inequality within and among countries’.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Maternal orphans have higher rates of mortality in childhood than their peers, both in low- and high-income settings 7 , 8 . As they grow up, orphaned children are at an increased risk of mental health disorders and suicide, as well as experiencing sexual violence 9 – 11 . Orphanhood is also associated with raised risks of teenage pregnancy, infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS during adolescence and chronic diseases later in life 12 .…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global and regional estimates of orphans attributed to maternal cancer mortality in 2020

Guida

Kidman

Ferlay

et al. 2022

Nat Med

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Despite women being disproportionally affected by cancer deaths at young ages, there are no global estimates of the resulting maternal orphans, who experience health and education disadvantages throughout their lives. We estimated the number of children who became maternal orphans in 2020 due to their mother dying from cancer in that year, for 185 countries worldwide and by cause of cancer-related death. Female cancer deaths—by country, cancer type and age (derived from GLOBOCAN estimates)—were multiplied by each woman’s estimated number of children under the age of 18 years at the time of her death (fertility data were derived from United Nations World Population Prospects for birth cohort), accounting for child mortality and parity-cancer risk associations. Globally, there were 1,047,000 such orphans. Over half of these were orphans due to maternal deaths from breast (258,000, 25%), cervix (210,000, 20%) and upper-gastrointestinal cancers (136,000, 13%), and most occurred in Asia (48%: India 15%, China 10%, rest of Asia 23%) and Africa (35%). Globally, there were 40 new maternal orphans due to cancer per 100,000 children, with a declining trend with a higher Human Development Index (range: 121 in Malawi to 15 in Malta). An estimated 7 million children were prevalent maternal orphans due to cancer in mid-2020. Accelerating the implementation of the World Health Organization’s cervical and breast cancer initiatives has the potential to avert not only millions of preventable female cancer deaths but also the associated, often-overlooked, intergenerational consequences of these deaths.

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Cause of parental death and child's health and education: The role of parental resources

Cited by 14 publications

References 60 publications

School Outcomes Among Children Following Death of a Parent

School Outcomes Among Children Following Death of a Parent

Examining common and distinct contributions to the etiology of suicide attempt and reattempt.

Global and regional estimates of orphans attributed to maternal cancer mortality in 2020

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