Sharon Hines Smith - African American Daughter

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GARLAND STUDIES ON
THE ELDERLY IN AMERICA

edited by

STUART BRUCHEY
ALLAN NEVINS PROFESSOR EMERITUS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

AFRICAN AMERICAN DAUGHTERS AND ELDERLY MOTHERS

EXAMINING EXPERIENCES OF GRIEF, LOSS, AND BEREAVEMENT

SHARONHINESSMITH

First published 1998 by Garland Publishing, Inc.

This edition first published in 2021 by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1998 Sharon Hines Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Sharon Hines, 1950
African American daughters and elderly mothers: examining
experiences of grief, loss, and bereavement / Sharon Hines Smith.
p. cm. (Garland studies on the elderly in America)
A revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3177-0 (alk. paper)
1. Grief. 2. BereavementPsychological aspects. 3. Loss (Psychology) 4. MothersDeathPsychological aspects. 5. Mothers and daughtersPsychology. 6. Afro-American womenPsychology. I. Title. II. Series.
BF575.G7S62 1998
155.9'37'08996073dc21
98-28996

ISBN 13: 978-1-03-216511-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-03-216658-2 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-00-324892-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003248927

This effort is dedicated to the 30 African American women who shared their experience of grief and loss upon the death of their elderly mothers. Their greatest hope was that others would benefit from what they shared.

Contents

1. 2. Literature Review
2. 3. Conceptual Framework
3. 4. Research Methods
4. 5. Findings
5. 6. Summary and Conclusions

1. 2. Literature Review
2. 3. Conceptual Framework
3. 4. Research Methods
4. 5. Findings
5. 6. Summary and Conclusions

1. i

Guide

Figures

1. 1. Idealization of Deceased Elderly Mother Occurring with Mutual Reciprocity Characterizing Mother-Daughter Relationship
2. 2. No Idealization of Deceased Elderly Mother Occuring with Mother-Daughter Relationship Characterized by Mutual Reciprocity
3. 3. No Idealization of Deceased Elderly Mother Occurring with One-sided Reciprocity on Daughter's Part Characterizing Mother-Daughter Relationship

Tables

1. 1. Age and Frequency for Daughters Interviewed
2. 2. Yearly Income and Frequency for Daughters Interviewed
3. 3. Employment Status and Frequency for Daughters Interviewed
4. 4. Years of Schooling completed By Daughters Interviewed and Frequency
5. 5. Marital Status of Daughters Interviewed and Frequency
6. 6. Good Mother and Good Person Ideal Types
7. 7. Themes Describing The Personal Meaning of Elderly Mother's Death for Daughters Interviewed
8. 8. Characterizations of Elderly African American Mothers by Daughters Interviewed

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Robert Rubinstein and the Parent Death Study Team at the Polisher Research Institute of the Philadelphia Geriatric Center for the privilege of studying under such a distinguished group of research scientists. I must also thank Dr. Robin Goldberg-Glen, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work and the National Institute on Aging-National Institute of Health for the opportunity to perform this research. I am especially grateful to Dean Mary Davidson and the Rutgers School of Social Work for their support in this effort as well.

Finally my sincere thanks to the middle-aged, African American women who so kindly and graciously shared their stories of an elderly mother's death. Without question their wisdom and insight have enriched my life both professionaly and personally.

African American Daughters and Elderly Mothers

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003248927-1

Death may be a certainty in this world, but some deaths get a lot less attention from that world than others. The death of an elderly person and its impact on an adult childis considered so "normal" that it has attracted scant attention. This study attempts to fill that gap by examining a specific slice of a specific ethnic group and looking at the meaning of elderly mothers' deaths for their adult, African American daughters from the perspective of those daughters.

Death and loss play a great role in the daily lives of African Americansgreater than for other groups. Since the time of slavery, the death rate among African Americans has exceeded that of other ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Consider, for example, the infant mortality rate for African Americans. That rate is consistently higher than it is for whites. In the United States in 1994, the mortality rate for all children under one year of age per 1,000 live births was 8.0 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1997). But the rate for whites that year was only 6.6, while for blacks it was 15.8, more than double the rate for white infants (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1997).

And nowhere is the life-and-death disparity between blacks and whites in the United States more apparent than in comparisons of life expectancy rates at birth. Again, consider 1994, when the life expectancy for white males was 73.2 years and for white females, 79.6 years, while the comparable rates for blacks were far less64.9 years for males and 74.1 years for females (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1997). Shorter life expectancies, high rates of death from homicide, disease and non-disease-related causes, and high infant mortality rates make death a common experience for the average African American regardless of age (Billingsley 1992; Staples 1994; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1997).

And so the African American family is an important resource for coping with death and loss. As a social system that changes as it moves through time, the family must adapt to multiple entrances and exits of its members (Carter and McGoldrick 1989). The way in which a family handles these changes is directly related to racial-ethnic cultural frameworks as well as to dominant culture influences

African American families are distinctive in their inclusion of nonblood relatives and extended kinship networks, as well as for their intertwined sense of family and community (Baca Zinn and Eitzen 1985; Billingsley 1992). Scholarly debates have examined whether these characteristics are cultural or structural in their origins (Frazier 1939; Herskovits 1941; Sudarkasa 1988). But the fact remains that these characteristics function as strengths for family members coping with death, loss, hardship, and discrimination in a society that continues its unequal distribution of social opportunities and resources on the basis of race. The African American family remains an important resource in dealing with systematic structural inequality as well as with sources of stress and with transitions such as death and loss (Carter and McGoldrick 1989; McAdoo 1988).

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