Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The impact of a child death on marital adjustment

Contents:

Author Info

  • Najman, Jake M.
  • Vance, John C.
  • Boyle, Fran
  • Embleton, Gary
  • Foster, Bill
  • Thearle, John
Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    One continuing concern in the sociological and psychological literature has been with the mental health consequences of stressful life events. Occasionally such stressful events have been linked to other outcomes such as deterioration in the extent or quality of the relationship between a cohabiting (usually married) couple. This paper takes data from a longitudinal study of parents of an infant who has died (due to a Stillbirth, Neonatal Death or Sudden Infant Death), to determine whether the relationship between the parents is adversely affected. The follow-up data is available 2 months and 6-8 months after the infant death. The results indicate there is an increased marital break-up rate for parents whose infant has died. Further, shortly after the death there is evidence of a deterioration of the quality of the marital relationship between the partners whose relationship has remained intact. Both these consequences of an infant death are unlikely to be due to chance, but their magnitude is relatively modest. At the 6 month follow-up, there is evidence of a deterioration in the quality of the relationship for those partners whose infant survived, such that at 6 months there are no longer any marital adjustment differences between parents experiencing an infant death and parents whose infant survived.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VBF-466KS65-133/2/4da8fc091a5fda0cb078f27986847ba5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Bibliographic Info

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Social Science & Medicine.

    Volume (Year): 37 (1993)
    Issue (Month): 8 (October)
    Pages: 1005-1010

    as in new window
    Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:37:y:1993:i:8:p:1005-1010

    Contact details of provider:
    Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description

    Order Information:
    Postal: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
    Web: http://www.elsevier.com/orderme/journalorderform.cws_home/315/journalorderform1/orderooc/id=654&ref=654_01_ooc_1&version=01

    Related research

    Keywords: stillbirth neonatal death sudden infant death marital adjustment stress;

    References

    No references listed on IDEAS
    You can help add them by filling out this form.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    1. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Lundborg, Petter & Vikström, Johan, 2012. "The Economics of Grief," IZA Discussion Papers 7010, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:37:y:1993:i:8:p:1005-1010

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.