The Loss Of A Parent Changes Children Of All Ages Forever

Losing a parent is among the most emotionally difficult and universal of human experiences. And although we may understand that the loss of a parent is inevitable in the abstract sense, that knowledge doesn’t lessen the grief when a mother or father dies. Losing a parent is grief-filled and traumatic, and it permanently alters children of any age, both biologically and psychologically. Nothing is ever the same again; losing a father or mother is a wholly transformative event.

“In the best-case scenario, losing a parent is anticipated, and there’s time for families to prepare, say their goodbyes, and surround themselves with support,” says psychiatrist Nikole Benders-Hadi, M.D., Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Doctor on Demand. “In cases where a death is unexpected, such as with an acute illness or traumatic accident, adult children may remain in the denial and anger phases of the loss for extended periods of time…[leading to] diagnosis of major depressive disorder or even PTSD, if trauma is involved.”

Effects of Losing a Parent on the Surviving Child

In the short term, the loss of a parent triggers significant physical distress. In the long-term, grief puts the entire body at risk. A handful of studies have found links between unresolved grief and cardiac issues, hypertension, immune disorders, and even cancer. It’s unclear why grief would trigger such dire physical conditions. One theory is that a perpetually activated sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight response) can cause long-term genetic changes. These changes — dampened immune responses, less pre-programmed cell death — may be ideal when a bear is chasing you through the forest and you need all the healthy cells you can get. But, unchecked, this sort of cellular de-regulation is also how cancerous cells metastasize.

Unlike the expected physical symptoms that can manifest while grieving the death of a parent, the psychological impact of loss is less predictable. There’s no “correct” emotion in the wake of such an enormous loss. In the year following the loss of a parent, the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) considers it healthy for adults to experience a range of contradictory feelings, including but not limited to anger, rage, sadness, numbness, anxiety, guilt, emptiness, regret, and remorse. It’s normal to throw oneself into work after loss. It’s also normal to withdraw from activities and friends when a parent dies.

Coping is less stressful when adult children have time to anticipate parental death.

Context also matters. The cause of death, and one’s level of preparation, makes a big difference. A sudden, violent death, for example, puts survivors at a higher risk of developing a grief disorder. In other cases, the loss of a parent with whom a child has a strained relationship can be doubly painful — even if the bereaved shuts down and pretends not to feel the loss.

“Coping is less stressful when adult children have time to anticipate parental death,” says Jumoke Omojola, a therapist and clinical social worker. “Not being able to say goodbye contributes to feeling depressed and angry.” This helps explain why studies have shown that young adults tend to be more affected by the death of their parents than middle-aged adults. When the parent of a young adult dies, it’s often unexpected, or at least earlier than average.

Surprisingly, the gender of both the parent and child can influence the contours of the grief response to a loss. Studies suggest that daughters have more intense grief responses to the loss of their parents than sons do. This isn’t to say men aren’t significantly affected by a parent’s death, but they may take a longer time to process their feelings. Ultimately, they may be slower to move on. “Males tend to show emotions less and compartmentalize more,” says Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist and author. “These factors do affect the ability to accept and process grief.”

Studies have also shown that the loss of a father is more often associated with the loss of personal mastery — vision, purpose, commitment, belief, and self-knowledge. The loss of a mother, on the other hand, elicits a more raw response. “Many people report feeling a greater sense of loss when a mother dies,” Manly says. “This can be attributed to the often close, nurturing nature of the mother-child relationship.”

At the same time, the differences between losing a father and a mother represent relatively weak trends. It goes without saying that everyone has their own unique relationships with their mothers and fathers, and an individual’s grief response to their parent’s death will be unique to their lived experiences. “Complicated bereavement can exist no matter which parent is lost,” Benders-Hadi says. “More often, it is dependent on the relationship and bond that existed with the parent.”

When Losing a Parent Is Too Much to Handle

Grief becomes pathological when the bereaved are so overcome that they’re unable to carry on with their lives after loss. Preliminary studies this occurs in about 1% of the healthy population, and in about 10% of the population that had previously been diagnosed with a stress disorder.

“A diagnosis of adjustment disorder is made within three months of the death if there is a ‘persistence of grief reactions’ exceeding what’s normal for the culture and the religion,” Omojola says. “In this situation, the grieving adult has severe challenges meeting social, occupational, and other expected, important life functions.”

Unresolved grief in the wake of a parent’s death can spiral into anxiety and depression.

Even adults who are able to go to work and put on a brave face after the loss of a parent may be suffering a clinical condition if they remain preoccupied with the death, deny that their parent has died, or actively avoid reminders of their parents, indefinitely. This condition, known as persistent complex bereavement disorder, is a trickier diagnosis to pin down (the DSM labels it a “condition for further study”).

In more concrete terms, unresolved grief in the wake of a parent’s death can spiral into anxiety and depression. This is especially true when the parent dies by suicide, according to Lyn Morris, Chief Operating Officer and a licensed therapist at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. “Adults who lose a parent to suicide often struggle with complex emotions such as guilt, anger, and feelings of abandonment and vulnerability,” Morris says. A 2010 study out of Johns Hopkins University found that losing a parent to suicide puts children at greater risk of dying by suicide themselves.

Elisabeth Goldberg, a relationship therapist in New York City who works with grieving adults, has seen the toll that long-term grieving can take on a marriage. Specifically, Goldberg suggests a (somewhat Freudian) link between losing a parent and cheating on a spouse. “I see many affairs as manifestations of unresolved grief about losing a parent,” she says. “The adult child stays in a state of disbelief and rejects reality in many ways in order to feed the delusion that the parent is still alive. The grieving child needs a new attachment figure; that’s the psyche trying to reconcile the denial and grief. So rather than say, ‘My mother died,’ the grieving child can say, ‘While Mommy’s away, I will play with someone other than my spouse.’”

How to Cope With Losing a Parent

Because the loss of a parent is something that almost everyone experiences at some point in their life, figuring out how to best cope with that loss in a healthy way remains an active area of scientific inquiry. Ross Grossman, a licensed therapist who specializes in adult grief, has identified several “main distorted thoughts” that infect our minds when we face adversity. Two of the most prominent are “I should be perfect” and “They should have treated me better” — and they tug in opposite directions.

“These distorted thoughts can easily arise in the wake of a loved one’s death,” Grossman says. His patients often feel they should have done more, and, “because they didn’t do any or all of these things, they are low-down, dirty, awful, terrible human beings,” he says. “These kinds of thoughts, if left undisputed, usually result in a feeling of low self-worth, low self-esteem, shame, self-judgment, self-condemnation.”

On the opposite extreme, adult children sometimes feel resentment towards their dead parents, blaming them for neglect or bad parenting earlier in life. This is similarly unhealthy. “The usual result of this is deep resentment, anger, rage,” Grossman says. “They may have genuine, legitimate reasons to feel mistreated or abused. In these situations, it’s not always about the death of the parent but the death of the possibility of reconciliation, of rapprochement and apology from the offending parent.”

Therapy may be the only way to get a grieving child back on their feet after the loss of a parent. (In general, many people benefit from talking about their loss with a professional.) Time, and an understanding spouse, can also go a long way toward helping adults get through this painful chapter of loss in their lives. It’s important that spouses sit with their partners in their grief, instead of trying to make it better or downplay the loss.

“Husbands can best support their wives by listening,” Manly says. “Men often feel helpless in the face of their wives’ emotions, and they want to fix the situation. A husband can do far more good by sitting with his wife, listening to her, holding her hand, taking her for walks, and — if she desires — visiting the burial site.”