Ambiguous loss refers to a loss that is unknown or undefined, making it difficult to cope with and resolve. Using a life course perspective that asserts that humans have agency to affect change in their own lives, this study focuses on an adoptee’s perceived ability to enact change in the situation surrounding the ambiguous loss that they may have experienced as a result of their adoption. Life course perspective also incorporates the concept of life trajectories, which explain how an early life experience can affect an individual over the course of his or her life. This study describes the essence of coping with adoption-related ambiguous loss from the viewpoint of adult adoptees.

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This study examined the processes associated with bonadaptation and maladaptation among adolescents with a deployed military parent. Specifically, this inquiry explored general themes of adaptation as well as those that are associated with the phenomenon of ambiguous loss. To examine the data this qualitative study used the constant comparative as well as modified analytic induction. Focus groups of 107 adolescents ranging in age from 11 to 15 were used to find five high adjustment adolescents and five low adjustment adolescents. This study found that common themes from each group included parental deployment status and frequency; formal and informal supports; changes in discipline; coping and stress reduction; changes in living arrangements; and contact with the deployed parents. This study found that there were commonalities within the members of the group and differences between the two groups themselves. It was also discovered that both groups exhibited indicators of ambiguous loss but were at different ends of the adjustment continuum. This study attributes this difference to the utilization of formal and informal supports as well as positive meanings attached to the deployment due to perceived benefits of the parent being deployed. / Master of Science

Currently there are 4.5 million U.S.-born children with at least one undocumented parent who are at risk of being deported (Passel and Cohn, 2011). The sudden loss caused by parental deportation destabilizes families and causes emotional distress, conduct issues, and academic decline in children (Dreby, 2012). Given the negative impact that deportation has on children and the recent increase of immigration efforts under the current administration (Cervantes, Ullrich, and Matthews, 2018), this study aimed to explore the long-term impacts of deportation on Latino children. This study used an interpretive phenomenological approach and retrospective interviews to gain understanding of how adults who experienced parental deportation as children made meaning of their experiences over time. Ten Latino adults who had a parent deported when they were between the ages of 7 and 17 were interviewed in depth about their parent's deportation, the long-term impact on their families and childhood, and how they made sense of those experiences as adults. Findings suggest that adults who have had a parent deported during childhood experienced long-term loss throughout their childhood, noticed their parent's absence more as they got older, and felt a lack of guidance while growing up. While some participants reported depression, anxiety or misconduct in childhood, positive beliefs about the experience emerged from the data that demonstrated resiliency. Implications for clinical practice and intervention are discussed. Researchers also make recommendations for future research. / Master of Science / Currently there are 4.5 million U.S.-born children with at least one undocumented parent who are at risk of being deported back to their country of origin (Passel & Cohn, 2011). The sudden loss caused by parental deportation destabilizes families and causes emotional distress, conduct issues, and academic decline in children (Dreby, 2012). Given the negative impact that deportation has on children and the recent increase of immigration efforts under the current administration (Cervantes, Ullrich, & Matthews, 2018), this study aimed to explore the long-term impacts of deportation on Latino children. Ten Latino adults who had a parent deported when they were between the ages of 7 and 17 were interviewed in depth about their parent’s deportation, the long-term impact on their families and childhood, and how they made sense of those experiences as adults. Adults in the study experienced long-term loss throughout their childhood, noticed their parent’s absence more as they got older, and felt a lack of guidance while growing up. Participants who were misinformed about what happened to their parents reported having more difficulty coping with the situation. While some participants reported depression, anxiety or misconduct in childhood, many developed beliefs about the experience that helped them find meaning and move forward after the loss. The findings of this study contribute to current literature by focusing on the long-term impact of parental deportation and the impact of family dynamics on children’s perceptions.

A growing number of families include a member who is transgender or transsexual. A discovery or disclosure of trans-identity and a transition of sex/gender identity that might follow are not only monumental for the trans-identified person, but also for that person's relational partners. When one engages in such a fundamental change of expressed identity, the person's relational partners are faced with renegotiating who that person is as well as who that person is to them, as a relational partner. Often, this process leads to the experience of ambiguous loss in which family members feel grief over a person who is still living. The purpose of this study was to investigate this renegotiation of meaning. More specifically, I sought to discover what cultural discourses or meaning systems are used by family members of trans-people when faced with the task of creating new meanings for their relatives'/partners' identities and their relationships to them, and how those meanings systems might contribute to the experience of ambiguous loss. Using Relational Dialectics Theory and Contrapuntal Analysis, I analyzed the communication of 37 family members and partners of trans-identified persons who had begun or completed a transition of sex/gender identity. I conducted in-depth interviews with each family member, asking them to both narrate their experiences and respond to particular questions. Family members' talk was characterized by four sites of discursive struggle, in which the meanings of four salient concepts were created: the self, sex/gender, trans-identity, and family. The meanings for these concepts were constructed through participants' invocation and positioning of competing discourses relevant to the concepts in question. Results showed that many family members do experience grief in response to a transgender transition and that grief is connected to the meanings they construct at these four sites. The findings show the fundamentality of sex and gender to understandings of personhood, and the centrality of communication to experience.

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Although there is abundant research on the etiology of Alzheimer's disease and its impact on primary caregivers, there is relatively little research that examines the consequences of the disease for entire families, and no literature that exclusively studies the experiences of non-caregiving family members. Seeking to explore the experience of non-caregivers, this qualitative study examined how adult children of an Alzheimer's patient who were not the caregiver for their parent experienced the onset and progression of the disease. Using the guiding theoretical frameworks of phenomenology, family systems theory, and ambiguous loss, in-depth interviews were conducted with three individuals and were coded for themes. The main themes found included externalization of symptoms, belief in the Alzheimer's diagnosis, acceptance, flexibility, sibling and parental relationships, communication, planning, shared family philosophy, family of origin roles, and boundary ambiguity. Implications for clinical practice and suggestions for future research are included. / Master of Science

The number of Americans living abroad currently is estimated at over four million, with over 37,000 matriculating into U.S. universities each year. If the social media giant Facebook were a country, it would be third largest in the world, with over 300 million users outside of America. The trajectory of our society is increasingly global. Amidst this shift, there is a unique multicultural subpopulation emerging-- Third Culture Kids (TCK), who experience a collision of cultures and form hybrid identities in the course of their development. TCKs are more specifically when a person spends a significant part of their developmental years outside their parents’ culture. The TCK takes on pieces of each culture, while never fully ‘belonging’ to any. They are most at home around others of a similar transient background. This report synthesizes research about globally mobile populations from across disciples, highlighting grief and ambiguous losses, acculturation stresses, and identity development. Potential implications for the college campus— at institutional and individual levels— will be discussed. This overview of current research and resources equips college counselors with a frame of reference for engaging this third culture in a holistic and contextualized manner. / text

The field of autism in epidemiology has received much attention in recent times especially as scientific information evolves on the causes and impact of autism spectrum disorder. Just as medical research is conducting to arrest the growing pace of autism with current research indicating one out of every 68 children in the United States diagnosed autistic, the field of the social science has equally produced some literature on the subject. Much of the social science and epidemiological information in the field has bothered on framing the concept (Murray, 2008), historical dimension and causation of the disease, and its associative influence on family (Grinker, 2007). However, not much has been done to assess the phenomenon from the point of view of conflict analysis and resolution (Sabatelli & Waldron, 1995) to fully understand their sense of conflict ambiguity and ambiguous loss of a child with autism (Cridland et al. 2014; O'Brien, 2007). This research therefore attempted to bridge that gap through reflexive analysis of transcripts from phenomenological interviewing of 19 participants comprised of 14 single parents and 5 married couples with autistic children. While the primary focus of the research was Single parents, married couples served comparative analytical purpose of data validation. Theories of phenomenology, Resilience, human needs, stereotypes & identity, relative deprivation, attribution, critical theory, ambiguous loss, etc. operationalize to frame the research language for hermeneutical transformative interpretation and social action about the phenomenon. Results from the study indicate conflict behavioral experience, a burden curve and resilient risk factors associated with caring for an autistic child leading to possible crisis borderline.

Historically, “offender”-focused discourses have dominated the field of criminology while overlooking those family members who become subject to justice intervention by virtue of their familial bonds. In this qualitative study, unstructured interviews were conducted with eight nuclear family members of criminalized persons in Ontario and Quebec. Participant accounts reveal that the interviewed family members self-imposed significant moral and legal responsibilities for their relatives following criminal justice intervention and simultaneously experienced negative role re-evaluation driven by feelings of guilt, failure, and self-blame. Participants’ inherent lack of control over their criminalized relatives’ behaviours and the criminal justice system’s decisions exacerbate negative impacts of criminalization on non-criminalized relatives’ self-concepts. This lack of control increases the stress of criminal justice intervention while straining family resources. When relatives are justice-involved for prolonged period, the family becomes stuck in a constant state of stress and uncertainty, which may have lasting consequences on the family if left unmanaged. Criminal justice intervention as a disruptive event then reconfigures the family in ways that often leave lasting impacts on nuclear family relationships. This thesis engages with Boss’ (1999, 2006) theory of Ambiguous Loss to analyze participants’ experiences and demonstrate the consequences of criminalization on various nuclear family members in a Canadian context. To mitigate certain limitations of Boss’ (1999, 2006) theory, criminal justice intervention is first defined as a disruptive event that transforms family members’ known realities into threatening and uncertain environments. This thesis then explores the stress and strain that justice intervention places upon the family and applies the theory of Ambiguous Loss to understand criminalization as a source of ambiguous loss. Further, this thesis expands the scope of Boss’ (1999) theory beyond the experiences of certain populations (i.e. children of incarcerated parents) and discovers the limitations of this theory in the context of criminological research. It also opens the door for future research to apply this theory to criminalized populations.