The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationships between the marital satisfaction and self esteem of bereaved parents and the following four factors related to the child's death: (a) the amount of forewarning the parents had of the child's death, (b) the time since the child's death, (c) the degree to which parents perceived their spouse to be responsible for the child's death, and (d) the degree to which the parents perceived themselves to be responsible for the child's death. The pile up of family life stress was included in this study as a control variable. / One hundred and eleven bereaved parents participated in this study. The parents were recruited from local chapters of Compassionate Friends in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. The data were gathered through self administered questionnaires. The findings were analyzed in the aggregate with the aid of multivariate analyses of covariance and multivariate correlations. / The results from this study revealed several relationships that shed light on the experiences of these bereaved parents. First, it was noted that a decline in marital satisfaction following the death of a child was related to an increase in the amount of time since the child's death. Second, there was evidence of a relationship between high self esteem and a high degree of perceived self responsibility for the child's death. Third, a relationship was revealed between the pile up of family life stress and the marital satisfaction and self esteem of these parents. The more stress the parents reported, the lower their marital satisfaction and self esteem. There was no support from these data for a relationship between the amount of forewarning of the child's death and the parents' marital satisfaction or self esteem. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-10, Section: A, page: 3171. / Major Professor: Mary Hicks. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77865 |
| Contributors | Swanson, Carol., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 108 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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