Is the dual process model of bereavement effective among older bereaved parents in China? An examination of the oscillation process and the effects of overloading

Although classic bereavement theories and research have systematically addressed bereaved people's experiences at the individual level, experiences with grief among the Chinese Shiduers (i.e., older adults in China whose only child has died), as one of the most vulnerable groups of bereaved people, diverge from established empirical research findings and theoretical models. This study adopted the dual process model of bereavement (DPM) and a structural perspective to analyze the particularity of Shiduers' grief work and attempt to theorize a conceptual framework to understand their life experience. The research data come from observation notes obtained by the researcher's participant observation and in-depth interviews with 20 Shiduers and five professionals in Wuhan, China. The findings indicate that the Shiduers experience overload in both the loss-oriented (LO) and restoration-oriented (RO) contexts. Within China's sociocultural context, the structural factors that contribute to overload, and the dynamic oscillation process between the LO and the RO were frequently impeded; this resulted in Shiduers being perpetually immersed in one aspect from which they were unable to escape. This study makes a contribution to the explanation of the difficulties that Shiduers experience when coping with grief and also highlights the failure of the universally validated DPM to analyze their grief.