Parentally Bereaved Children's Grief: Self-System Beliefs as Mediators of the Relations between Grief and Stressors and Caregiver–Child Relationship Quality

Abstract

We investigated whether 3 self-system beliefs—fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem—mediated the relations between stressors and caregiver–child relationship quality and parentally bereaved youths’ general grief and intrusive grief thoughts. Cross-sectional (n = 340 youth) and longitudinal (n = 100 youth) models were tested. In the cross-sectional model, fear of abandonment mediated the effects of stressors and relationship quality on both measures of grief and coping efficacy mediated the path from relationship quality to general grief. Fear of abandonment showed a marginal prospective mediational relation between stressors and intrusive grief thoughts. After excluding the mediators, relationship quality showed a direct prospective relation to intrusive grief thoughts.

Support for this research was provided by National Institute of Mental Health Grant P30 M439246-15 to establish a Preventive Intervention Research Center at Arizona State University, Grant 1R01 MH49155-05 to evaluate a preventive intervention for bereaved families, and Grant 2R01 MH49155-06 to conduct a 6-year follow-up of this intervention. We are grateful to the families for their participation and to Ana Brown, Qing Zhou, Michelle McConnaughay and Wai Chow who helped manage the data set.

Notes

Note. p ≤ .05 when |r| ≥ .11; p ≤ .01 when |r| ≥ .15; p ≤ .001 when |r| ≥ .20.

Note. T1 = Time 1; T2 = Time 2; T3 = Time 3.

⁺ p ≤ .10

∗p ≤ .05

∗∗p ≤ .01. When |r| ≥ .32, p ≤ .001.