Here you can read about the research project:
“Young Children’s Grief in a Family Context” examines how children aged 3–8 experience grief after losing a parent, and how families navigate grief together in their everyday lives. The project places the children’s own perspectives at the center and contributes new knowledge about early childhood grief as well as grief as a shared, relational phenomenon within the family.
Losing a parent in early childhood is one of the most stressful experiences a child can experience. Research shows that parental loss can have long-term psychological, social, and health-related consequences. Nevertheless, knowledge of how young children experience and manage grief is limited, as existing knowledge is primarily based on descriptions from adults or older children.
Young children understand and express grief differently than older children and adults and are, at the same time, closely dependent on their family - particularly the surviving parent - to regulate emotions and create meaning after a loss. The family, therefore, plays a central role in how children cope with grief.
This project investigates how grief unfolds in families with young children following a parental loss. The goal is to generate new knowledge about how young children (ages 3–8) experience grief, and how grief is experienced, shared, and managed within the family’s everyday life.
The project is led by Malene Hoffmann Buskbjerg, Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Psychology, Aarhus University, and affiliated with the Unit for Bereavement Research. She is supervised by Maja O’Connor, Professor and Head of the Unit for Bereavement Research at Aarhus University.
Additionally, the project involves an interdisciplinary collaboration with Associate Professor Osman Skjold Kingo (Department of Psychology, Aarhus University), psychologist and PhD Rikke Smedegaard Rosbjerg (The Cancer Counseling Center in Aarhus), and Professor Charlotte Handberg (Department of Public Health, Aarhus University).
The project is funded as part of a Ph.D. fellowship at Aarhus University.
The project uses qualitative interviews, in-home observation, and age-appropriate methods to understand how children and parents experience and share grief. The project follows strict ethical guidelines, with a focus on anonymity, informed consent, and special consideration for the youngest participants.