ABSTRACT
Living through the experience of the death of their child is something no parent ever expects to do. There was a time when child death was expected and people lived in the knowledge that it was unlikely that all their children would survive infancy. Today in the West we exist in a world of significant medical, scientific and technological advances, in which we have expectations of longevity and of being able to watch our children grow and develop into adulthood. Our hope is that our children will not have to deal with our death until they are independent and no longer reliant on us as parents for their safety and well-being. The death of a child therefore challenges our assumptive world in the most profound way. It also challenges therapists, who can be faced with myriad issues, not only in terms of what bereaved parents may present, but also in terms of their own beliefs, thoughts and feelings about children, childhood and parenthood.
