Exploring the future for children experiencing parental death

This thesis explores associations that could have an impact on the experience of a
parental death in childhood. It suggests a methodology for establishing the prevalence of
parental bereavement that helps the author to explore quantitatively any associated links
between parental death in childhood and delinquency rates in 16-year-olds. As well as
helping to establish the prevalence of parental death in childhood, the methodology also
enables the author to explore possible contributing factors that could increase a child's
vulnerability to the experience of parental death such as social class, age and gender of
child and dead parent these are presented as a set of risk variables in which the data
shows an increase in a parentally bereaved child's susceptibility to delinquent behaviour.
It also compares themes within essays written by parentally bereaved children and none
parentally bereaved children. The exploration used the Thematic Apparition Test coding
as a framework from which to identify differences in the stories told about the future by
each comparison group.

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