Talking to young children about death: an investigation of parent-child conversations

Parent-child conversations have remained on the periphery of studies investigating children's developmental understanding of death and the circumstances under which death is first discussed with children have not yet been documented in the literature. The current program of research sought to investigate the content of parent-child conversations about death and the impact of such discussions. This dissertation is comprised of three manuscripts that collectively contribute to the literature by documenting young children's early experiences with death, exploring the role of parental beliefs and attitudes in parental explanations of death, and evaluating children's feelings and understanding of death after such conversations. The first manuscript reports on parental use of religious and biological explanations of death. Parents (n = 130) of children 1- to 7-years of age completed an online questionnaire. The types of explanations of death provided by parents were examined in relation to parental religiosity, afterlife beliefs, death anxiety, and perceptions of children's physical and emotional reactions to the conversations. The most frequent types of explanations provided to children were religious-spiritual. Parental beliefs in afterlife and death anxiety were able to accurately predict whether parents provided a religious-spiritual explanation. The majority of parents perceived no physical and emotional reactions in their children, however, there was a positive correlation between the biological explanation of the irreversibility of death and perceptions of children's generalized anxiety. The second manuscript provides information on children's earliest conversations about death and parental satisfaction with such conversations. Parents (n = 140) of children 2- to 7-years responded to an online survey regarding their children's experiences with death and the circumstances, conversations, and explanations related to these experiences. The majority of parent-child conversations about death were first initiated when children were between 3- and 3.5-years of age and conversations were most likely initiated by parents. A subset of parents (n = 88) provided narratives of the explanations of death that they gave their child. Satisfaction was higher in those parents who provided explanations of a continued existence after death compared to those who discussed the absence of a future physical relationship after death. The final manuscript reports on children (n = 48) 3- to 8-years that came to the lab and had a conversation about death with their parents. Children also completed measures of fearfulness and death understanding. Children's understanding of the cessation of bodily functions at death was predicted by discussions of the physical causes of death. Understanding of the irreversibility of death was also related to the content of discussions, as those parents who addressed a continued existence had children with lower understanding scores compared to those who discussed the causality of death. Higher levels of understanding death were correlated with higher levels of fear. Previous researchers who have reported that children's fear of death decreases as their biological understanding of death increases have recommended that death be discussed in biological terms with children. The current research introduces a new alternative, that a religious-spiritual conceptualization of death may act as a buffer to children's fear of death and danger. Taken together, findings from these three studies provide empirical support to enhance the developmental literature on children's understanding of death, as well as contribute a new line of inquiry to the field that includes young children's religious-spiritual conceptualizations of death and parent-child conversations.

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