Losing Your Parents, Finding Your Self : The Defining Turning Point of Adult Life

In a book that is destined to strike a chord with baby boomers everywhere, journalist Victoria Secunda illustrates how losing a parent has a profound effect on the lives of adults. Drawing from her original study of more than 100 adults as well as her own experiences, Secunda addresses a myriad of issues, such as: How does this event transform relationships with ones siblings, spouse, friends, children, or own identity? Most importantly, Secunda explores how losing a parent dramatically reshapes ones sense of self, causing a re-evaluation of ones life and choices in ways that were not possible before.

While most writers on parental death focus on mourning, Secunda (When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends) points out that this crucial event fosters major reassessment of one's attitude toward siblings, marriage, children and career. Having surveyed 94 people who have lost parents as adults, and interviewed several of them, as well as experts, she reports that each of the four possible familial pairings (father-son, etc.) has its own pattern, and that the loss of both parents has strong ripple effects. Notably, sibling relationships become primary, although affinities can fluctuate depending on birth order, age and previous closeness. Parental loss leaves many emotionally unmoored; in response, some feel a strong urge to marry, while others solidify or abort marriages, or confront their solitude. More than half of Secunda's respondents found that their relationship with their children changed, mostly for the better, while childless adults often paid new attention to nieces and nephews or became mentors. A significant minority reappraised their careers after their parents' death, leading to redirection, rejuvenation and, in some cases, confusion. More than half of the respondents reported intensified friendships, while some winnowed away those who didn't "add meaning to their lives." Ultimately, Secunda concludes, there is gain in loss. Those who made the most progress as "adult orphans" recognized that "whatever they did or didn't get from their parents now was moot." While hardly definitive, Secunda's survey is a stimulating look at a timely issue. 8-city author tour. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As the baby-boom generation moves into middle age, their own aging parents are dying in record numbers. What does it mean to become an "adult orphan"? Strangely, this momentous event in adulthood has been given scant attention in the popular psychological literature except in terms of bereavement. Yet, argues author Secunda (When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends), coping with parental death is not a question of grief but of identity: "In one respect, adult children who outlive their parents are all the same: they relinquish the single role they have played longer than any other--that of being a son or daughter to a living mother or father." Drawing on her survey of 94 people, Secunda explores how adult orphans gradually give up their old childish identity and discover their true adult selves in terms of their relationships with siblings, children, and friends. Although a bit repetitious--Alexander Levy's The Orphaned Adult (LJ 9/15/99) covered the same territory more concisely and more elegantly--Secunda's book will be in demand. [See interview with the author on p.180--Ed.]--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal.
---Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.