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Sibling Legacy: Stories about and Bonds Constructed with Siblings Who Were Never Known

Cameron Meyer, Marcella
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981949

Abstract Details

2015, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: Sociology.
The death of a child shatters what many theorists think of as firmly held family constructs and there are few available cultural scripts to manage such a loss. The effect of that loss has a long lasting ripple effect on the family. Bereaved individuals, including, if not most especially bereaved parents, often appear to desire to maintain a symbolic connection to their deceased loved one in order to minimize the pain associated with the loss and to affirm that the deceased person’s life (however short) had meaning and purpose. Continuing Bonds Theory best captures this experience. But, what of family members who did not know the person who died, children born subsequent to the death? What is their relationship to the deceased child and what meaning does it hold for them? Families are the locale not only where much of our most intimate grief work occurs, but also where children first do identity formation and meaning making. This study offers a new way of looking at how families grieve together, exploring family grief expression over the long term from the experience of siblings who did not know the child who died. It is from the perspective of individuals who indirectly experienced the loss. Participants were raised in a family that lost a child, but did not directly experience the loss. I interviewed 49 adults who had lost a sibling. The participants were either not yet born or younger than the age of 3 when their brother or sister died. This qualitative study attempts to better understand how symbolic relationships are constructed, the meanings of those symbolic relationships for the subsequent siblings, and the bearing, if any, there is on the siblings’ identities. This research study adds to scholarship in the field of Sociology of Death regarding memory work, construction of symbolic relationships, and meaning making in families following the loss of a child. Memory work is done in social interaction, where actors construct memories that provide support to present identities or choices of action. Each of the participants had some sort of symbolic relationship to their deceased sibling. In this study, I catalog various images of the participants’ deceased brothers or sisters whom they never knew in life, and the varying ways that they have or continue to interact with that symbolic other. Finally, I categorize ways that participants have felt influenced personally by the story of the loss, and the cultural meanings they attribute to the loss. This study also contributes to the discussion of whether we continue to live in a death denying culture. In spite of shifts in attitudes toward death, such as the palliative care and hospice movement, there is little in our culture that addresses the meaning of dying children. This study describes ways that some families have negotiated strategies to memorialize, honor, and remain symbolically connected to the child who died, each to varying degrees.
Steven Carlton-Ford, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Clement Jeffrey Jacobson, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Annulla Linders, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
138 p.
Sociology
sibling grief; child loss; family meaning making; symbolic relationships; continuing bonds; siblings never known

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cameron Meyer, M. (2015). Sibling Legacy: Stories about and Bonds Constructed with Siblings Who Were Never Known [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981949

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cameron Meyer, Marcella. Sibling Legacy: Stories about and Bonds Constructed with Siblings Who Were Never Known. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981949.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cameron Meyer, Marcella. "Sibling Legacy: Stories about and Bonds Constructed with Siblings Who Were Never Known." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981949

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1427981949
681
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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.