Paternal Bereavement in Older Men

Abstract

Styles of coping with the death of an adult child were explored in a study that examined the behavioral and affective aftermath of loss in older men. Twenty-five fathers aged sixty to eighty-eight who had lost an adult child were studied through ethnographic interviews based on life history review. Three general styles of adjustment to loss were identified. Men who described themselves and their careers in superlative terms appeared most likely to adjust well to the loss. These men tended to “conquer” the loss by intellectualizing it, psychologically relegating the loss to the periphery of daily life, or capitalizing on their self-esteem to reestablish control over life. A second group of men used avoidance, denial, or a dependence on others as primary agents of adjustment. While this latter group presented as only slightly less self-complacent than the above, they were less able to diffuse or appease accompanying feelings of helplessness through self-aggrandizement. For them, recovery from the death of a child seemed more tied to external than to self-affirming mechanisms. Immersion in second marriages, bereavement support groups, or religion became outlets for relief and sources of regeneration. Two men who candidly described their lives with regret and disappointment, constituted a third group. Lacking the conviction of self-worth that lead other men in the sample to triumph over the loss, they displayed no determination to rescue themselves or be rescued from grief. For both men, mourning was a continuing process that seemed to relate to the futility of unrealized self-potential as well as the loss of a child. Results suggest that, for men, narcissism may be a potent antidote for loss that can buffer, neutralize, and even erase the pain of losing a child.