Coping Strategies Following a Child's Violent Death: How Parents Differ in their Responses

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Abstract
This study examined coping strategies used by bereaved parents whose adolescent and young adult children died by accident, suicide, or homicide. Death event data were verified from Medical Examiner's records. A community-based sample of 261 parents was recruited 6 to 28 weeks following the deaths and followed prospectively up to five years postdeath. Coping data were obtained five times during the study, using COPE, a 53-item standardized questionnaire with 13 conceptually distinct subscales (Carver, Scheier,&Weintraub, 1989). The data provide partial support for the gender socialization hypothesis. Bereaved mothers reported using emotion-focused strategies in conjunction with other coping methods. Similarly, bereaved fathers did not report problem-focused coping at the exclusion of other strategies. Nonetheless, logistic regression analyses showed that 4 of the 53 COPE items correctly predicted gender 75 percent of the time. Current conceptualizations of coping are called into question.