Parental Grief after the Loss of an Only Child: Anthropological Narratives from Cameroon

Although death is a universal human experience, there is great diversity in the way death related grief is expressed, experienced, and managed within and across cultures. This study seeks, from a symbolic interactionist perspective, to explore how parents experience and express grief following the death of their only child, and to understand the sociocultural factors that shape this experience. It pays particular attention to how the meanings of the loss are constructed through social interaction. The sample consisted of twenty participants and data were gathered through in-depth interviews conducted in five regions of Cameroon. The findings show that while participants commonly experienced guilt, anger, emptiness and loneliness, and depression, the intensity and duration of these emotions varied significantly. This can be attributed to a host of interacting sociocultural factors, including the cultural perception and classification of types of deaths, the cultural value and symbolism of children, societal discourse, religious beliefs, and the nature of the social network in which the bereaved parents are embedded. These dynamic factors coalesced to define the extent of the loss, with deep implications for parents’ sense of self-worth, belonging and roles.