Introduction

Critical life events such as the loss of a job, the end of a relationship or a divorce or, as discussed in this chapter, the passing of a parent, are often accompanied by depression, melancholy, disorientation and loss of perspective on life. It is the concept of critical life events in particular that is a predictor of psychological anomalies. As a general rule, a critical life event condenses the experience and takes the affected person into a stadium of ‘relative imbalance’ (Filipp, 1981, p 24; Inglehart, 1991), therefore requiring the person to reorganise his or her behaviour and experience making as a consequence of the painful event. However, coping with such a critical life situation not only depends on a person's psychological disposition, but also on the event's biographical and social circumstances. This aspect is emphasised in sociological concepts dedicated to ‘turning points’ (Strauss, 1997), which stress the coping process. The notion of ‘turning points’ includes the idea that major changes to one's life situation also have a subjective effect on one's biographical construction methods. Accounts are clearly divided into ‘then’ and ‘now’, thereby having a decisive influence on the organisation of memories and on the structure of the presented life story.

In his book Mirrors and masks, Strauss (1997, 2nd edn) points out different turning points that can lead to a new way of taking stock of reality, assessing it and understanding it anew. However, Strauss primarily focuses on turning point experiences made during adulthood. He discusses events such as migration, regulated status passages in organisations or religious conversions, which people need to assess and, in turn, may lead to new patterns of orientation and understanding. Now, studying life events experienced during childhood can contribute to a better understanding of these ‘turning points’, since children usually have a different range of action and a protracted sense of time compared to adults. Also, a child's (core) identity is still in the developmental stage, making conditions for transformation different. The focus of this chapter lies in the process of coping with such a major event such as the loss of a parent during childhood and the consequences this has on a person's life thereafter.