Examining longer-term effects of parental death in adolescents and young adults: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health

Abstract

Using longitudinal data spanning a 7-year period, we investigated the behavioral and psycho-social effects resulting from a parent's death during early childhood or teenage years on adolescent and early adulthood functioning. Findings confirmed previous work demonstrating various behavioral problems and social-psychological adjustment deficits during adolescence. Results suggested that most detrimental adjustment behaviors among parentally bereaved youth fade as they entered into young adulthood. Yet, premature school withdrawals and diminished interests in college attendance at Wave 1 left many of these young adults with diminished academic accomplishments, lingering economic disadvantages and for females a hesitancy to marry as their lives progressed into adulthood.

Educational attainment in offspring bereaved by sudden parental death from external causes: a national cohort study from birth and throughout adulthood

“…The present study did not find any significant difference in educational attainment at any level by gender of the deceased parent, and minimal differences by gender of the bereaved offspring. These findings are in accordance with previous studies reporting similar educational sequela following maternal and paternal bereavement [6], and loss in daughters and sons [5,6,18]. The lack of gender differences is also in accordance with our recent study from Norway reporting no differences in bereaved offspring's suicide risk depending on gender of the deceased parent and gender of the bereaved offspring [25].…”

“…Last, we investigated completion of University or College education after age 18. This education includes one-year programs, bachelor's degree programs, and master's degree programs, which all require completion of a high school education.…”

“…Several previous studies investigating educational attainment in parentally bereaved children and adolescents have been restricted to paternal bereavement [5,7,14,15], or have used data from the US [8,[16][17][18] where all higher education is based on tuition fees paid by students and/or their families. This complicates generalization to most European countries where students and families to a lesser extent have to pay for education.…”

Losing a parent to cancer as a teenager: Family cohesion in childhood, teenage, and young adulthood as perceived by bereaved and non‐bereaved youths

“…The relationship dynamics between the surviving parent and child change after the death of a parent . This is supported in a long‐term follow‐up study, which showed that parentally bereaved youths had less harmonious relations with their surviving mother or father, including lack of communication, compared with their peers in non‐bereaved families . The relationship with the surviving parent has been shown to be a major factor influencing the children's coping skills and well‐being .…”

Parental death during childhood and violent crime in late adolescence to early adulthood: a Swedish national cohort study

“…Thus, in the light of these previous findings we were particularly interested in investigating the possible differential impact of parental death from natural and external causes and whether a potential association between parents' externally caused deaths were associated with offspring violent criminal offending after adjustment for a large number of potentially confounding factors. There are few previous longitudinal studies on this topic and the results are conflicting (Feigelman et al, 2016;Kendler et al, 2014;Wilcox et al, 2010;Sauvola et al, 2002). In a study based on survey data, no differences were seen between the bereaved and the non-bereaved groups with regard to self-reported criminal involvement in young adulthood (Feigelman et al, 2016).…”