Is Death Taboo for Children? Developing Death Ambivalence as a Theoretical Framework to Understand Children’s Relationship with Death, Dying and Bereavement

Paul, Sally

doi:10.1111/chso.12352

Cited by 32 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Despite the research highlighting many ways in which adults could approach the topic of death with children and young people, the results suggest a taboo still exists. In schools, talking about a death tends to happen among children and does not involve staff (Paul, ). Adults may be modelling an avoidance approach and may give the impression that it makes them feel uncomfortable (McGovern & Barry, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Death and dying: A systematic review into approaches used to support bereaved children

Duncan

2020

Review of Education

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Supporting, caring for and working with bereaved children is both daunting and challenging, yet not much is known about how schools can help children to cope with death and dying. The main objective of this study was to identify approaches used to support children who are grieving, and to explore implications for teachers. The use of retrospective autoethnography sets out this review as a practitioner enquiry-based project. A systematic review of literature involving school-aged children was undertaken. The focus of these studies was on approaches to death and dying taken by children, parents and teachers-which helped recently bereaved children to cope. The studies all relate to children aged 3-18. Four databases were searched, up to and including the spring of 2019: British Education Index; Child Development & Adolescent Studies; ERIC; and PsycINFO. The included studies were analysed using a qualitative enquiry model which draws on metaethnography. Abstracts and titles of 765 articles were examined. Following the selection process, 15 studies were included. All of the studies were peer-reviewed, published after 2000 and used qualitative methods of data collection (interviews, ethnographies, a case study and observations). Encouraging children to openly communicate, find comfort in various ways and express emotion regularly were the most common approaches. The results indicate that if the correct approaches are taken, children can feel supported during a challenging and fearful time in their lives. Future research is required on the effects of specific teacher-led approaches in schools.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The studies in this review have shown that children can talk about death. It is often the social domain surrounding the child, consisting of school staff and family members, who have a taboo concerning death (Paul, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Death and dying: A systematic review into approaches used to support bereaved children

Duncan

2020

Review of Education

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“…Similarly, R. L. M. Lee (2008) asserts the death taboo thesis fails to address the shifting context of death discourse. Paul (2019) specifically investigates children's experiences and finds that the death taboo thesis lacks nuance, confining and misrepresenting their experiences. Finally, Troyer (2014), a specialist in death studies, argues that death is not taboo in Western society, but "we're just not encouraged to talk about it.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Death Taboo for Older Chinese Immigrants?

Zhang

2020

Omega (Westport)

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Much of the scholarly literature sees death as a taboo topic for Chinese. To test this assumption, this study held seven focus groups in the Greater Toronto Area in 2017. It found that the majority of the older Chinese immigrant participants talked about death freely using either the word death or a euphemism. They talked about various issues including medical treatment and end-of-life care, medical assistance in dying, death preparation, and so on. A small number did not talk about death, but it seemed their reluctance was related to anxiety or discomfort or simply reflected a choice of words. The study concludes death as taboo could be a myth, at least for older Chinese immigrants.

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“…How a child engages with or copes with their bereavement is mediated by a variety of factors that relate not only to the bereavement itself (such as attachment to and relationship with the deceased, type of death and so on) but also to the child’s development (emotional, cognitive and social) and wider relational, social, educational and cultural environment. 11 , 13 – 15 For some children, appropriate and timely specialist bereavement support is essential and in affluent societies a range of bereavement services exist. Yet, while there is a limited but growing evidence base on the strengths and weaknesses of such support, 16 , 17 the majority of children do not require specialist intervention 18 and the indiscriminate use of bereavement services can be unhelpful.…”

Section: Childhood Bereavement and The Relevance Of Public Health Appmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prevalence of childhood bereavement in Scotland and its relationship with disadvantage: the significance of a public health approach to death, dying and bereavement

Paul

Vaswani

2020

Palliat�Care

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Background and Method: There is an absence of research on the prevalence of bereavement during early childhood and the relationship between childhood bereavement and socioeconomic status (SES) and this poses a challenge in both understanding and supporting children’s bereavement experiences. Using longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Scotland study, which tracks the lives of three nationally representative cohorts of children, this paper aimed to address these gaps in research. It specifically drew on data from Birth Cohort 1 to document the recorded bereavements of 2,815 children who completed all 8 sweeps of data collection, from age 10 months to 10 years. Findings: The study found that 50.8% of all children are bereaved of a parent, sibling, grandparent or other close family member by age 8 and this rises to 62% by age 10. The most common death experienced was that of a grandparent or other close relative. The study also found that children born into the lowest income households are at greater risk of being bereaved of a parent or sibling than those born into the highest income households. Discussion and Conclusion: Given the prevalence of childhood bereavement and its relationship with disadvantage, this paper argues that there is an important need to understand bereavement as a universal issue that is affected by the social conditions in which a child becomes bereaved, as well as an individual experience potentially requiring specialist support. This paper thus seeks to position childhood bereavement more firmly within the public health approach to palliative and bereavement care discourse and contends that doing so provides a unique and comprehensive opportunity to better understand and holistically respond to the experience of bereavement during childhood.

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Is Death Taboo for Children? Developing Death Ambivalence as a Theoretical Framework to Understand Children’s Relationship with Death, Dying and Bereavement

Cited by 32 publications

References 33 publications

Death and dying: A systematic review into approaches used to support bereaved children

Death and dying: A systematic review into approaches used to support bereaved children

Is Death Taboo for Older Chinese Immigrants?

The prevalence of childhood bereavement in Scotland and its relationship with disadvantage: the significance of a public health approach to death, dying and bereavement

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