Stillbirth and the Couple: A Gender-Based Exploration

ABSTRACT

The stillbirth of a baby occurs in about 1 in 110 families yearly. Yet, little is understood about the ways in which grieving mothers and fathers experience the baby's death. This study is intended to explore the ways in which bereaved parents perceive and cope with the death of their baby and how the baby's death affects them both individually and as a couple. Respondents answered open-ended questions about their experiences. Results suggest that mothers and fathers grieve individually and collectively, struggling to find meaning in their losses. Responses to a baby's death may depend, in part, on the parent's gender, as well as on the individual's locus of control, couple and family cohesion, the degree of attachment to the baby, and social support. The death of a baby may create conflict in a marital dyad, yet many couples also experience a greater sense of closeness. A therapeutic relationship that is nonhierarchical and egalitarian, focusing on “keeping the therapist close to the experience of each partner” (Vatcher &; Bogo, 2001 Vatcher , C. , &; Bogo , M. ( 2001 ). The feminist/emotionally focused therapy practice model: An integrated approach for couple therapy . Journal of Marital and Family Therapy , 27 ( 1 ), 69 – 83 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 76) may offer a place where the marital relationship can flourish after such a tragic experience.     

Boundary Ambiguity in Gay Stepfamilies: Perspectives of Gay Biological Fathers and Their Same-Sex Partners

Gay stepfamilies have their own unique stressors that impact the individual member's ability to form a family. Through in-depth interviews, gay biological fathers and their same-sex partners described their experiences in their stepfamilies. The conceptual framework of boundary ambiguity is used to frame the experiences of institutional and interpersonal stressors that influence these family members.     

Military Deployment of an Adult Child: Ambiguous Loss and Boundary Ambiguity Reflected in the Experiences of Parents of Service Members

ABSTRACT

This study explored the experiences of parents of service members, military family members who are often overlooked even though they are likely a vital source of support for their military adult-children. Reflections on deployment of military adult-children were gathered from 21 parents in semistructured group interviews. A framework of ambiguous loss, boundary ambiguity, and ambivalence was used to analyze comments reflecting pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment experiences. Pre-deployment anticipation of leave-taking was associated with boundary ambiguity and ambivalence for parents, tempered by safety concerns. During deployment ambiguity in parental role expectations and parameters complicated parents’ attempts to manage physical absence and maintain psychological presence. Post-deployment challenged parents with ambiguous psychological presence and disruption of family boundaries, complicated by changes associated with the effects of war.     

Boundary Ambiguity and Borderline Personality Traits: Implications for Treatment for Adolescent Girls in Foster Care

This article explores the relationship between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits in adolescent girls in foster care. Boundary ambiguity is a family systems concept: family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family—in either psychological or physical presence or absence. In foster care, it can be assumed that an adolescent girl has experienced trauma significant enough to be removed from her family. The connection between early childhood trauma and attachment disruption in addition to the connection between insecure/disorganized attachment and borderline personality disorder leads to the conclusion that these same adolescents are at high risk for developing borderline personality traits. The sample consists of 40 caseworkers from New England’s child protection departments and therapists from residential programs working with adolescent girls. They completed the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure for Adolescents to determine the presence of personality disruption as well as a variation of Pauline Boss’s Boundary Ambiguity Scale #1, and demographic questionnaires. The results find a significant correlation between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits. These findings provide directions for future research in clinical treatment and child welfare policy making.     

The Long Goodbye: Women, Companion Animals, and Maternal Loss

Heightened and often anxious attachment to companion animals can be one of the sequela of women's unresolved grief over early maternal loss. Clinical data suggest that, especially among women, the death of pets can reactivate the unfinished mourning over the mother. Drawing on one extensive case study, this paper examines this little explored, but commonly experienced relationship. From the perspectives of attachment theory and feminist therapy, the paper addresses the human-animal bond, gender differences in grief, the long term effects of early maternal loss, later attachment style, and companion animals as internalized parent/child figures. Recommendations for treatment are offered to help women work through both losses.     

Ambiguous Loss Research,Theory, and Practice: Reflections After 9/11

This article contains an overview of three decades of research, theory development, and clinical application about ambiguous loss. Although the work includes both physical and psychological types of ambiguous loss, the focus is the aftermath of 9/11 (September 11, 2001), when the World Trade Center collapsed following terrorist attacks. On the basis of her previous work, the author was asked to design an intervention for families of the missing. She reflects on what she learned from this unexpected test and presents new propositions and hypotheses to stimulate further research and theory that is more inclusive of diversity. She suggests that scholars should focus more on universal family experience. Ambiguous loss is just one example. Encouraging researchers and practitioners to collaborate in theory development, she concludes that research‐based theory is essential to inform interventions in unexpected times of terror, and in everyday life.     

When Baby Brings the Blues: Family Therapy and Postnatal Depression

Postnatal depression impacts on a significant number of women and their families. As a topic it is attracting much interest from researchers as we become clearer about its impact on the long‐term mental health of both women and their partners, as well as on the couple's relationship and their children's mental health. This article will provide a brief overview of postnatal depression and the current research associated with it, and consider the usefulness of systemic family therapy interventions. Examples of these are included along with a clinical vignette.     

The Baby as Subject: The Hospitalised Infant and the Family Therapist

This article is concerned with the experience of infants who endure long hospitalisations. It explores the concept of the baby as subject; that is, infants as active, psychic participants in their earliest relationships. It explores therapeutic possibilities with hospitalised infants from an infant mental health perspective. It advocates for family therapists to equip themselves for infant—parent therapeutic work.     

Infant Trafficking and Baby Factories: A New Tale of Child Abuse in Nigeria

Baby factories are new systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women with unwanted pregnancies in Nigeria. Since this practice was first described in 2006, it has been growing rather than abating. This paper reviews the scientific literature, along with media reports, and critiques this phenomenon from a children's rights' perspective. Children born into baby factories are denied various civil rights. They also suffer abuse in the baby factories and as a consequence of being born in such places. This abuse can be classified into immediate and long term. Immediate abuse includes inadequate care and its repercussions, denial of birth registration, illegal adoption and murder. Long‐term or delayed abuse that they may be exposed to includes health‐related consequences, neglect, death, child labour, prostitution and other sexual abuse, organ trafficking and recruitment as child soldiers. Various factors are thought to drive the baby factory phenomenon which include poverty, high infertility rates and the profitability of local and inter‐country adoptions. Programmes directed at addressing the root cause of the problem are needed in order to eliminate infant trafficking. Also, clear laws that delineate inter‐country adoption and infant trafficking need to be enacted. Most importantly, baby factories need to be recognised as child trafficking routes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘New systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women’

Key Practitioner Messages:

• A new type of child abuse and human trafficking that targets infants has emerged in Nigeria in what are described as ‘baby factories’.
• Baby factories are criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies and the practice is growing.
• Children born in baby factories suffer a range of immediate abuses and are exposed to long-term abuses.
• Baby factories violate several articles in the Convention on the Rights of a Child.

‘Criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies’

Citing Literature

Number of times cited: 5

• Olga B. A. van den Akker , Cross-Border Surrogacy , Surrogate Motherhood Families , 10.1007/978-3-319-60453-4_8 , (199-230) , (2017) . Crossref
• Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde, Clifford Obby Odimegwu and Stella O. Babalola , Reasons for Infertile Couples Not to Patronize Baby Factories , Health & Social Work , 42 , 1 , (57) , (2017) . Crossref
• Peter Sidebotham , Kneeling on Mung Beans , Child Abuse Review , 25 , 6 , (405-409) , (2017) . Wiley Online Library
• Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde, Olufunmbi Olukemi Makinde, Olalekan Olaleye, Brandon Brown and Clifford O. Odimegwu , Baby factories taint surrogacy in Nigeria , Reproductive BioMedicine Online , 32 , 1 , (6) , (2016) . Crossref
• Olusesan Makinde, Bolanle Olapeju, Osondu Ogbuoji and Stella Babalola , Trends in the completeness of birth registration in Nigeria: 2002-2010 , Demographic Research , 35 , (315) , (2016) . Crossref

Volume 25 , Issue 6 November/December 2016

Pages 433-443     

A Be/Coming-Out Model: Assessing Factors of Resilience and Ambiguity

Sexual orientation, “coming out,” and the impacts of external stressors, resiliency, and losses remains an area not well understood. Being a sexual minority can result in ambiguous losses that potentially complicate established or formative resilience. These types of losses are largely overlooked and little research exists on how these loss(es) impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) populations (Boss, 2006 Boss, P. (2006). Loss, trauma and resilience: Therapeutic work with ambiguous loss. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. [Google Scholar]). This article presents a “Be/Coming-Out” model to better assess and understand three interactive life dimensions: self-perceptions, social relationships, and society structures. The model depicts the ongoing and multilayered interactions, highlighting areas of resiliency and ambiguity, including potential risk factors and barriers to formation of resiliency behaviors. Discussion focuses on be/coming out as a lifelong process and applying the model as a tool in assessing individuals and couples levels of resiliency, as well as potential ambiguous losses related to sexual minority identity.     

Helping parents to manage infant crying and sleeping: a review of the evidence and its implications for services

Infant crying and night waking are common concerns for parents, costly problems for health services and may trigger infant abuse or lead to serious child disturbances. Parents are given contradictory advice on how to manage infant crying and sleeping, indicating the need for evidence‐based guidance. This review of recent research draws distinctions between infant crying and sleeping problems, between the problem identified by parents and the infant behaviour underlying the problem, between different types of crying behaviour and their causes, and between the types of cases which present at different ages. It proposes that the two main approaches to parenting advocated by baby‐care experts, ‘infant‐demand’ and ‘structured’ parenting, have different benefits, and costs. Comparative studies have found that infant‐demand parenting is associated with low amounts of fussing and crying in the first three months of age, but with night waking which continues beyond three months. Randomised controlled trials have provided evidence that structured parenting leads to more overall fussing and crying during the first three months, but reduced night waking and crying after that. The findings are translated into recommendations for preventing and treating infant crying and sleeping problems, for policy debate, and for further research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expertise and experience: a deliberative system of a functional division of labor for post-normal risk governance

Public policy is increasingly facing human-made risks in various domains (technology, environment, energy, food, health, security, etc.) that pose new challenge for risk governance. These risks induce cognitive, evaluative and normative challenges that result from uncertainty and ambiguity. This necessitates a new interplay between the state, experts, stakeholder groups, and the public at large. We confront the notion of risk governance with theories of deliberative democracy: How can societies develop deliberative institutions and processes for governing risks more effectively and how can society be better involved in risk governance? We argue that a deliberative system with a functional division of labor that assigns specific tasks to and recognizes specific competences in experts, stakeholder groups, and citizens facilitates an appropriate integration of scientific and experiential substance. We argue that the integration of expertise and experience can be conveyed by differentiated deliberation by expert, stakeholders, and the public, which produces better outcomes than the classical risk analysis approach in many regulatory systems. To this end, we combine theory, normative conceptualization, and institutional practicability.     

Boundary Work and Exchange: The Formation of a Professional Service Market

This article develops a processual theory of boundary work and exchange for understanding the emergence and transformation of social structures such as professions and their state regulatory regimes. It argues that social boundaries are often ambiguous and elastic areas, and their social construction involves multiple forms of boundary work (boundary making, boundary blurring, and boundary maintenance) as well as the process of exchange that integrates them. Based upon 256 in‐depth interviews with law practitioners and public officials in twelve provinces of China, 3 years of ethnographic work on a professional Internet forum, and archival research, the study employs the theory of boundary work and exchange to explain the creation, differentiation, and fragmentation of legal professions in three decades of China's economic reform (1979 to 2009).     

“Good Manner of Dying” as a Normative Concept: “Autocide,”“Granny Dumping” and Discussions on Euthanasia/Death with Dignity in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the two characteristics of the way the issue of euthanasia/death with dignity has been discussed in Japan, compared with the situation in Europe and the USA. The two characteristics are: (i) that the concept of “euthanasia” is sharply distinguished from that of “death with dignity” in Japan in that the former only refers to the killing of a patient by administration of a lethal drug while the latter refers to letting a patient die by withholding or withdrawing life‐prolonging medical treatments; and (ii) that the view that it is sinful to commit suicide is not as common in Japan as it is in the West. In order to clarify these characteristics, I examine the nature of suicide and murder in relation to the issue of euthanasia and death with dignity while briefly reviewing the history of the debates in Japan in order to see how the characteristic understanding of “death with dignity” has generated. I also clarify, by giving examples, the structure of those narratives with regards to the “good manner of dying,” which excludes from society the elderly and people with incurable diseases and ones with motor and intellectual disabilities. In the end, I describe how biopolitics functions in the current Japanese situation.     

The Experience of Pervasive Loss: Children and Young People Living in a Family Where Parental Gambling Is a Problem

Gambling research has contributed much to our understanding of the effects of gambling on families, yet we have only the most cursory understanding of the child's perspective on what it is like to grow up in such a family. The aim of this qualitative study was to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of Australian children who live in families where a parent or caregiver has a serious gambling problem by exploring the perspectives and understandings of the children and young people themselves. This paper reports a central finding, the experience of Pervasive Loss, from our interviews with 15 young people, 11 males and 4 females, aged between 7 and 18 years. Their sense of loss encompassed both physical and existential aspects of the child's life, including their parent(s), relationships, trust, security, sense of home, and material goods. The dimensions of this experience of pervasive loss are explored from the child's perspective. Children living in families where gambling is a problem experience threats to their overall well-being to the extent that parental problem gambling must now considered to be a significant child health as well as social problem.     

Culture,boundary, and identity: a comparison of practices between two online punk communities in China

This article analyzes how digital technology can shape cultural practice in Chinese online communities. By using the concepts of boundary and identity, it explores the formation of two online punk communities in China, created by those who are interested in punk music originating from Anglo-American countries. Drawing on data from participant observation and 10 in-depth interviews, this article first reviews literature on Internet culture in China, online communities, boundaries, and identity. It then focuses on the differing practices of the two online punk communities. A discussion is subsequently provided concerning how boundaries are constructed in online communities through the exclusion that is enabled by the technological platform. An analysis of how the members identify themselves with online communities and form punk subcultures encouraged by the boundaries of their respective communities is then presented towards the end of the article. It is through this process that the members empower themselves in their relationships with the surrounding society.     

Boundary dimensions of social innovation: negotiating conflicts and compatibilities when developing a national agenda

In order to add to the existing knowledge on the complex institutional dynamics of negotiating conflicts and compatibilities in innovation processes that address societal challenges and social needs, this article scrutinizes the scientific and societal debate on the theoretical and practical application of “social innovation” by means of the concept “boundary object” linked to institutional theory. A participatory case study of the development of an R&I agenda for social innovation in Sweden, formulated through dialog between stakeholders from the public, private and non-profit sectors, is presented. The results show that the unpredictable, emergent, evolving and adaptable character of needs, challenges and solutions in social innovation processes is made more theoretically and practically manageable by acknowledging social innovation as a boundary object. This is since this concept, despite its ambiguous character, helps balance complexity and usefulness in a way that serves to expand existing knowledge on institutional dynamics.     

When food becomes a feminist issue: popular feminism and subaltern agency in the World March of Women

In ongoing contests over neoliberal globalization, feminists are increasingly forging alliances with non-feminist others around common struggles, both locally and transnationally. This is indicative of a broader shift in transnational feminist politics from intra-movement to inter-movement alliances, and maps onto a historic transition from the UN era (roughly 1985–1995) to the global justice era (roughly 1995–present). Engagement with new partners on non-traditional issues is shifting the scope and contours of the feminisms in question and raising anew the question of hierarchy in transnational feminist networks and in their coalition politics. This article traces the appropriation of food sovereignty by the World March of Women in the context of its alliance with the transnational peasant movement, Vía Campesina, the development of a feminist politics and discourse of food sovereignty, and enquires into the relationship between these processes and “grassroots” members of the March – the rural, peasant and Indigenous women who are understood to be the primary subjects of a feminist politics of food sovereignty.