Struggling to live a new normal life among Chinese women after losing the only child

Abstract

Losing the only child was a destructive disaster that had destroyed Chinese women’s life and health in all dimensions. However, there is no suitable theory or knowledge to guide nursing practice to these women. This study, thus, employed Glaserian grounded theory to discover substantive theory on the living process of Chinese women after losing the only child.

Purposive sampling, snowball sampling, and theoretical sampling were used to recruited participants. Thirteen Chinese women who have lost the only child aged 50 to 68 years old recruited. Data were collected through in-depth interview, observation, and field notes. Data were analyzed by the constant comparative method concurrently with data collection. A qualitative data analysis program, namely ATLAS.ti, was used to facilitate data analysis.

Struggling to live a new normal life was emerged as the basic social process of Chinese women after losing the only child. It consists of three phases, living in agony (losing the life anchor and sinking in grief and fear), coming to term (accepting loss and self-controlling), being alive in a new way (treasuring the deceased only child, resetting life goals and reconstructing a new life). In order to live a new normal life, which participants defined it in their way; participants put much effort and developed various strategies to move forward. Receiving support motivates and facilitates these Chinese women to deal with the loss. However, whenever encountering adverse triggering situations would bring them back to the first phase. Then participants repeated the process. Therefore, Chinese women are moving back and forth among these three phases.

This substantive theory provides new knowledge and insights of the living process of Chinese women after losing the only child. It can be applied as a guideline to develop nursing interventions to assist Chinese women in dealing with the loss of the only child in the future.