Death and bereavement

The death of a family member affects not only the individuals in the family but also the family unit collectively. The precise difficulties the family faces and the manner in which they cope with them depend on particular circumstances. Nevertheless, a few generalizations can be made with respect to the kinds of problems that frequently develop.

For the family as a whole, one obvious effect is the disruption of normal activities. This in turn may lead to the surviving family members' gaining greater resolve to face up to their loss collectively. On the other hand, it may lead instead to fragmentation similar to that which follows divorce. Indeed, divorce and death often have similar effects on children. Removal of an authority figure may lead them to take on greater responsibilities in the family, or greater independence, or it may lead instead to family conflicts and a lack of family solidarity. It may also break the remaining ties between brothers and sisters who live apart.

Bereavement has a profound and more individual effect, too, on the surviving spouse. This might be enhanced if the couple were married for most of their lives and particularly if they shared their last years together in isolation from their children. Studies in the United States have shown that, in general, a husband who survives the death of his wife has greater difficulty in coping than a wife who survives the death of her husband. Not only does a surviving husband have to cope with emotional loss but he also has to take on tasks such as cleaning and cooking—which in many modern societies are still usually done by the wife. On the other hand, some sociologists have argued the reverse, that a surviving wife has greater difficulty, owing in part to the larger number of women who live to an advanced age and the resulting greater difficulty they have in finding a new husband. In other societies, such as India, widows are given distinctly inferior social status to married women and have a much harder time than widows in the West. In most parts of India widows are not permitted to wear brightly coloured clothes or to look after their appearance, and attendance at certain rituals, notably weddings, is forbidden them. Indeed, it has been suggested that the practice of suttee (immolation of the widow), formerly practiced in India, was in part encouraged by the extreme hardships that faced widows in medieval Hindu society.

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Marriage in modern society

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