{"title":"Continuing bonds and the posthumous child.","authors":"Ronit D Leichtentritt, Michal Mahat Shamir","doi":"10.1080/07481187.2025.2454498","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The strategies that bereaved individuals use to establish an ongoing bond with the deceased have attracted considerable attention. However, the narratives of young widows pregnant at the time of their partner's death reveal unique strategies that have not yet received attention in the literature. This interpretive phenomenological research explores the strategies employed by 13 Israeli widows who lost their partners while pregnant. Continuing bond strategies were found to be associated with the trajectory of the posthumous child's life, beginning with the stages of pregnancy, childbirth, baby naming, and the child's resemblance to the deceased. The involvement of the newborn in the widows' post-death relationship with their deceased husband establishes a new sense of time-a relational one-in which they navigate between the past, present, and future, blurring boundaries and experiencing moments of stopped time. Implications are discussed in relation to the \"replacement child\" phenomenon.</p>","PeriodicalId":11041,"journal":{"name":"Death Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Death Studies","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2025.2454498","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The strategies that bereaved individuals use to establish an ongoing bond with the deceased have attracted considerable attention. However, the narratives of young widows pregnant at the time of their partner's death reveal unique strategies that have not yet received attention in the literature. This interpretive phenomenological research explores the strategies employed by 13 Israeli widows who lost their partners while pregnant. Continuing bond strategies were found to be associated with the trajectory of the posthumous child's life, beginning with the stages of pregnancy, childbirth, baby naming, and the child's resemblance to the deceased. The involvement of the newborn in the widows' post-death relationship with their deceased husband establishes a new sense of time-a relational one-in which they navigate between the past, present, and future, blurring boundaries and experiencing moments of stopped time. Implications are discussed in relation to the "replacement child" phenomenon.
期刊介绍：
Now published ten times each year, this acclaimed journal provides refereed papers on significant research, scholarship, and practical approaches in the fast growing areas of bereavement and loss, grief therapy, death attitudes, suicide, and death education. It provides an international interdisciplinary forum in which a variety of professionals share results of research and practice, with the aim of better understanding the human encounter with death and assisting those who work with the dying and their families.
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