How the Death of Queen Elizabeth Will Affect Her Adult Children, According to Science
The Worrisome Research About What’s Facing King Charles III and His Siblings Andrew, Edward, and Anne
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I lost my father eleven months ago after a long illness. As longtime readers of The Nonlinear Life know, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year exploring different aspects of grief—from what to say to someone who’s just lost a loved one (and what not to say) to what surprised me most about an event I thought I was well prepared for. (You can also read the eulogy I shared about my dad, a great and good man from Savannah, Georgia, here.)
But by far, the most poignant thing I’ve learned in my year of reading and thinking about loss—and the single piece that touched the most readers—is the unnerving research I uncovered about the impact that losing a parent has on adult siblings.
Those came to mind in recent days as I watched the Royal Family grieve in the most public way the death of Queen Elizabeth II. If there’s one thing we’ve all seen and felt in the last quarter of a century since Princess Diana died is how much the queen was a galvanizing—and unifying—force not just for the fractured country she heads but also for her even more fractured family.
Still, while much of the attention in the press has focused on her two most prominent grandsons, William and Harry (of course, it was the queen who managed even after her death to do what no one else on the planet could pull off—a moment of reconciliation between the feuding brothers), arguably the greater challenge that the new king will face involves what to do about his wayward brother Andrew, along with the support offered to his other brother, Edward, and their sister, Anne.
In other words, King Charles III has an adult sibling problem, just like many others who’ve recently lost the final parent.
So what does the research show—and what can the rest of us learn from the Royal Family about navigating our adult siblings once we’ve lost a parent?
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1. The Death of a Parent Rearranges a Family.
Geoffrey Greif and Michael Woolley of the University of Maryland make the point that, given the typical human life span, a sibling relationship is likely to be the longest relationship in most people’s lives. The death of a parent often jostles that relationship because a central focal point has been lost. “Regardless of siblings’ relationships, the experience of the dying process and subsequent death of a parent can reverberate through the sibling system, causing siblings to reexamine their relationship with each other.”
In essence, the rules of the family get rewritten.
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2. Who Cared for the Dying Parents (and Who Didn’t) Is a Major Factor in What Happens Next
Dmitry Khodyakov of the Rand Corporation and Deborah Carr of Rutgers point out that the death of a parent is often distressing to adult siblings because it removes “one of the most enduring and emotionally significant bonds that individuals maintain over the life course.”
Two of the biggest impacts: 1) The death forces the surviving children to confront their own mortality and their position in the family; and 2) If the parent dies after a lengthy illness, the adult siblings have likely taken on different roles in caring for the ill parent, which often produces resentments, strains, and sometimes expectations for compensation.
Photo credit Pool/Anwar Hussein Collection/WireImage
3. The Death of a Parent Affects Men and Women Differently
Bonne Lashewicz of the University of Calgary and Norah Keating of the University of Alberta and Swansea find some good news in how children approach their aging parents: Most adult siblings feel a sense of shared “ownership” over the care of their parents.
“The terms filial obligation and filial responsibility have used to describe a combination of love, duty and the desire to reciprocate for their upbringing on the part of adult children.” Also, older parents are less likely to expect equal filial responsibility. “Parents have different expectations for care from adult children who are not employed, who do not have children of their own, and from sons compared to daughters.”
But the authors find worrying news, too: Sibling expectations for sharing care responsibilities do not necessarily translate into equal commitment. Factors such as personality, gender, other family responsibilities, and proximity to the care recipient affect how much children contribute. Also, women “are more likely than men to provide care to their aging parents and to coordinate care among siblings.”
If there’s some good news in the research, it is that being aware of these possible tensions can make things better. As Greif and Woolley point out, educating adult children both before and after the loss of a parent about what potentially lies ahead for their sibling relationships should be part of the grieving process. The more you “normalize the feelings that siblings encounter,” the more you reduce the chances that those feelings will explode into a larger rift.
Also, Lynn White of the University of Nebraska and Agnes Riedmann of Creighton University report that some siblings do grow closer following the death of a parent because the parent was often the chief source of tension among the siblings. Mom is not here to like you better anymore, so we can finally realize that we actually have a lot in common!
But even with this dose of positivity, the warning signs are clear for the children of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. After all, while most of us find it challenging enough to handle our tensions in public, the new king and his three siblings have to go through their adjustments in front of the entire world. We can only hope that the well-managed period of mourning the family has entered will go some distance to reestablishing family unity that will serve all of the members for the difficult transitions to come.
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Thank you for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, watch my latest TED Talk, or scroll through my other posts. And if you'd like to do a storytelling project with a loved one similar to the one I did with my father, click here to learn more.
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Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.
Or, you can contact me directly.
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