146 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan
Losses Experienced by Emerging Adults
Death Losses
Just as the tween/teen life stage is characterized by new understandings about
death and a somewhat sentimentalized view of it, the emerging adult stage is
often still set in a romanticized view of death that is often mingled with chang-
ing spiritual and religious views (Power & McKinney, 2013). As the evocative
title “From ‘worm food’ to ‘infinite bliss’: emerging adults’ views of life after
death” (Arnett, 2008) indicates, emerging adults have a range of views about
death. In a study of emerging adults’ views of “what happens after death?”,
only the 25% who said they believed in heaven and hell were strongly affili-
ated with a specific religion (Christian) while 15% believed in heaven only and
an equal percentage believed there was some type of existence after death,
but were unable to define it. Although 21% said they had no idea what hap-
pened after death, 11% believed in no afterlife (“worm food”) and another 13%
believed in a return to an energy source or reincarnation. Notably, Arnett com-
ments that the emerging adults’ responses “are often rich in insight and irony”
(p. 241) in contrast to prior findings with teenagers, who were reported to be
“remarkably inarticulate” on similar topics.
When coping with the death of a loved one, most emerging adults feel
that their “belief in a just world (BJW)” has been violated. Lerner (1980)
defined belief in a just world as “a theory of justice that has as its basic
premise the notion that people get what they deserve and deserve what they
get” (p. 512) and has since theorized that it helps individuals protect them-
selves from a sense of threat or death anxiety (Lerner, 1997). BJW seems to be
an outgrowth of a sense of safety in childhood and young adolescence and
evolves idiosyncratically through exposure to life events (Dalbert & Salley,
2004). Taken to an extreme, BJW has been associated with stigmatization,
vengefulness, and judgmental attitudes, but in moderation is associated
with a greater sense of well-being, more effective coping, and less intense
negative emotion (Lench & Chang, 2007). Surely the death of a close loved
one, especially unexpectedly, would cause a reworking of a belief that the
world is just and bad things only happen to bad people. Researchers consid-
ering what happens when Just World beliefs are violated suggest that tem-
porary accommodation to a sense that the world is unjust is expected. They
recognize that the world is not always just and may even expect bad things
to happen to good people, themselves included, with a subsequent rise in
a sense of vulnerability. However, such individuals may be at higher risk
for longer-term maladaptive coping after trauma and loss (Lench & Chang,
2007). Especially on first encounter with death, grappling with the injustice
of the world (and the secondary loss of security that entails) may be a dif-
ficult challenge for emerging adults.Death of a Parent
An emerging adult’s sense of injustice may be particularly heightened by the
off-time loss of a parent. As noted in Chapter 1, off-time losses are challenging
because few peers are coping with similar issues. This leaves grievers without
company in their grief, and without models for how to grieve such a loss.