Toward a Theoretical Framework for Perinatal Bereavement

For many women a foetal or neonatal death is a significant life-altering event. Modern medicine has offered pregnant women an early awareness of their developing foetus coupled with an opportunity for advanced feelings of attachment, which, in most cases, accentuates the grief and sense of loss. While crisis intervention services have become standard practice in hospital settings and typically meet many clinical and short-term needs of bereaved parents, conventionally held theories of grief fall short of the realities described by such parents. This paper critically examines the clinical and research support for current approaches to perinatal grief and argues that theory development specific to perinatal loss is needed within the field and that social workers can play an important role in this respect. Some emerging ideas are discussed that appear to hold promise for establishing models that would be more responsive to the particular complexities of perinatal bereavement.