Parenting After the Death of a Child:A Practitioner's Guide

"In this research based book, Buckle and Fleming let bereaved parents tell their own stories of struggling with the many losses that a child's death can bring and how they coped as they moved toward "regeneration." This book offers help and hope for bereaved families and is a must read for caregivers to whom these families turn for care and comfort."---J. William Worden, PhD, ABPP, author of Grief Counseling & Grief Therapy and Children & Death: When a Parent Dies

"This is a wonderful gift to clinicians and bereaved families, and a major contribution to the study of bereaved parents. Based on grounded research, the authors, well experienced clinicians themselves, offer solid theory and well supported interventions to sensitize counselors to the issues faced by bereaved parents as they continue to parent their other children."---Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, Professor, the College of New Rochelle; Senior Consultant, The Hospice Foundation of America

"Buckle and Fleming have made an important contribution to the underdeveloped literature on parenting after the death of a child. This book should be in the library of anyone who works with bereaved parents."---Stephen R. Connor, PhD. Senior Research and International Consultant, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

The death of a child has a tremendous and overwhelming impact on parents and siblings, completely altering the psychological landscape of the family. While there is substantial research exploring parental bereavement, little attention has been given to the unique challenges and daunting responsibilities mothers and fathers face in having to parent their surviving, bereaved children. Buckle and Fleming explore this complex and important topic by combining a detailed and thoughtful review of contemporary bereavement literature, their own insights as clinicians, and the results of a qualitative research study with parents who have lost a child. They argue that bereaved parenting is not simply engaging the pain of one's loss or grieving, but instead involves living what they term a duality of devastation and regeneration - parents engaging the pain of their loss and then turning to rebuilding their life and family are not discrete events. Both can overlap and inform the other, or one can take precedence over the other at any given time. Clinicians working with bereaved parents, as well as researchers, educators, and students interested in the topic, will find this book to be a rich, sensitive, and invaluable resource.

Jennifer L. Buckle, PhD, R. Psych., is a registered psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Stephen J. Fleming, PhD, C. Psych., is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, at York University in Toronto, Canada.