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Abstract A burgeoning demographic literature documents the exceedingly high rates at which contemporary cohorts of women across the Global South experience the death of their children—even amid historic declines in child mortality. Yet, the patterning of maternal bereavement remains underinvestigated, as does the extent to which it replicates across generations of the same family. To that end, we ask: Are the surviving daughters of bereaved mothers more likely to eventually experience maternal bereavement? How does the intergenerational clustering of maternal bereavement vary across countries and cohorts? To answer these questions, we make use of Demographic and Health Survey Program data from 50 low- and middle-income countries, encompassing data on 1.05 million women and their mothers spanning three decadal birth cohorts. Descriptive results demonstrate that maternal bereavement is increasingly patterned intergenerationally across cohorts, with most women experiencing the same fate as their mothers. Multivariable hazard models further show that, on average, women whose mothers were maternally bereaved have significantly increased odds of losing a child themselves. In most countries, the association is stable across cohorts; however, in select countries, the risk associated with having a bereaved mother is shrinking among more recent birth cohorts.
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Spatial Clustering of Adolescent Bereavement in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Purpose Few studies have examined grief and bereavement in the context of a pandemic, particularly among young people during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Methods The objective of this study is to examine spatiotemporal clustering of bereavement using data from Crisis Text Line, an SMS-based intervention with widespread usage among youth and adolescents in the United States from January 2017 to September 2020. Results Results found significant spatial clustering of bereavement during the pandemic period in the late summer months compared with the onset of the pandemic. Conclusion Our study provides the first evidence of elevated bereavement in adolescents using a technique for rapidly identifying clusters of bereavement risk among this vulnerable subgroup. Findings can be leveraged
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- Award ID(s):
- 2044839
- PAR ID:
- 10315852
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of adolescent health
- Volume:
- 69
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1879-1972
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.04.035
