How a Landmark Study Sheds Light on Parental Grief
Unpacking a Research Paper
In the previous article, "Why Should We Research Grief", I argued why the academic study of grief is a useful exercise for society. I also promised to review a paper from an academic journal.
I have chosen the paper “Long-Term Effects of the Death of a Child on Parents’ Adjustment in Midlife” by Catherine H. Rogers, Frank J. Floyd, Marsha Mailick Seltzer, Jan Greenberg, and Jinuk Hong. It was published in the Journal of Family Psychology in 2008. (Here is a Link to Full Article)
When you first read an academic paper, you'll be struck by its formal structure. There's a prescribed way of writing these papers. If they are not formatted correctly, they will not be published. This formal structure does make it less accessible to non-academic readers. Professional academics are expected to read tens of thousands of articles throughout their careers, so part of their training involves learning to efficiently process these papers. They become adept at navigating the formal structure.
To support their research, they must correctly cite and reference any articles they use. Academic papers often have multiple authors and can be published in various journals. This is why you might see academic papers cited in shorthand within the paper I'm reviewing. For example, if I wanted to use this paper to support an argument in an academic journal, I would cite it as (Rogers et al., 2008) within the text and then reference it in full detail in the 'References' section.
This is a peer-reviewed academic journal. Published by the American Psychological Association, it covers a wide range of family-related topics. Academic papers undergo peer review, a process where experts in the field evaluate the research before publication. This ensures the research meets academic standards and is valid. While peer review has its own complexities (a topic for another Substack maybe?), it aims to ensure quality and trustworthiness.
The paper uses data from a valuable longitudinal study. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term project tracking 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The WLS has collected data on these individuals throughout their lives, including information on their backgrounds, well-being, health, relationships, occupations, and families. This extensive data allows researchers to study various topics related to ageing, health, and well-being. Ongoing for several decades, the WLS allows researchers to study how people change over time. The WLS also includes data on participants' physical and mental health, education, employment, family life, and social networks. The publicly available WLS dataset allows researchers worldwide to conduct their own analyses. Used in many studies, the WLS is a valuable resource for researchers studying various topics.
This paper uses data from this well-respected study with a large sample size collected over an extended period. This increases our confidence that the findings can be generalised, with some caveats (which I won't delve into here).
Below is a summary adapted from Google's AI language model, Gemini Advanced. With some prompting, it reviewed the paper and created a helpful overview. This is a good starting point for those unfamiliar with academic journals.
Summary of 'Long-Term Effects of the Death of a Child on Parents’ Adjustment in Midlife' (Rogers et al., 2008), created by Gemini Advanced:
This research paper explores the long-term impacts of losing a child. Using data from a study that followed people for many years, researchers compared parents who experienced the death of a child with those who did not.
The study found that even after a significant amount of time had passed, bereaved parents were more likely to experience depression, health problems, and difficulties in their relationships.
However, the research also identified factors that helped parents recover from grief, such as having a sense of purpose in life and having other children. Interestingly, neither the cause of the child's death nor the time since the death seemed to affect the parents' ability to recover.
These findings suggest that while losing a child is a deeply traumatic event with long-lasting effects, most parents eventually adapt to their loss. The study emphasizes the importance of providing support to bereaved parents and helping them find new sources of meaning in their lives.
Key takeaway: Losing a child is a devastating experience with long-lasting consequences, but with the right support, healing and recovery are possible.
Please leave a comment if you find articles like this useful and if would like to read more like this.