The Disenfranchisement of Perinatal Grief: How Silence, Silencing and Self-Censorship Complicate Bereavement (a Mixed Methods Study)

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic and mixed-methods research design, the article explores the social and interactive processes of disenfranchisement of perinatal grief through the mechanisms of silence, silencing and self-censorship in encounters between bereaved women and the social milieu. The analysis finds that disenfranchisement results from the constriction of the social space of bereavement along various lines of discourse, cultural values, practice and materiality, that include: the passing of time (expectations of a quick 'recovery'); competing discourses of loss (simplistic-dominant vs. complex-subordinate meaning-making); the biometrics of pregnancy (lower gestational age being equated with less intense grief); gendered ideas of reproduction and feeling rules; asymmetries in social power; social spheres (hospital, home, community, support groups); socio-materialities and performance/ritual; and structural aspects of social and familial organization (gender, age, intergenerational and kin v. non-kin relations). These processes are intimately linked to the complication of grief by undermining support, meaning-making and continuing bonds.

Keywords: complicated grief; disenfranchisement; mixed methods, stillbirth, termination of pregnancy; perinatal grief; silence.