6 Emerging Adults 149Death of Friends/Lovers
The paucity of academic literature about the death of a parent in emerging
adulthood is even more obvious concerning the death of a friend or lover.
We know that friends, peers, and intimate partners take on more emotional
salience during adolescence, and Arnett (2007) confirms that these attach-
ments remain highly influential during emerging adulthood. In a study of
25 men ages 19 to 25 who had experienced the sudden death of a male friend,
Creighton, Oliffe, Butterwick, and Saewyc (2013) found that the majority of
the emerging adult men in their sample reported “manning up” and avoid-
ing overt emotional expressions other than anger, despite the fact that they
provided photos indicating deep emotional responses to their friends’ deaths.
Many of their subjects asserted that men’s stoicism is “inbuilt” (p. 38) and they
attributed this not only to social norms “taught from an early age: don’t cry, it’s
not your job” (p. 38), but also to biology: “it just won’t connect with tear glands
and I think that’s just how guys are” (p. 38). As the authors note, this has
implications for intervention. Taking photographs for the research inspired the
bereaved men to deep expression, suggesting that clinicians and supporters
need to recognize that bereaved, emerging adult males may seem stoic, but
experience life changing thoughts and feelings that resist verbal expression.
Creighton et al. (2013) found that most emerging adults in their study inte-
grated the friend’s death into their identity by becoming more adventurous
(embracing life), more fatherly (being more protective and responsible), or
experiencing a type of rebirth the authors describe as the Lamplighter identity
as they now “saw the light” (p. 41) and worked to catalyze themselves and
others toward good.
As Johnson’s reading indicates in Chapter 5, female teens and emerg-
ing adults tend to feel similar anger in the face of sudden death, yet tend to
be more likely to cry, engage in ritual or memorial, or otherwise feel freer to
express themselves emotionally. Yet she also notes that many of these indi-
viduals feel their grief to be disenfranchised: Family members and siblings are
viewed as legitimate grievers while grieving friends are relegated to a sort of
“also ran” status. A study that examined grief reactions of nursing students
after the sudden death of a classmate indicates that these nurses exhibited
“morbid anxiety, helplessness after death, fear of disappearance, and think-
ing of one’s own future” (Jiang, Chou, &Tsai, 2006, p. 279). Yet, the nursing
students rarely shared their feelings of grief with others. It is entirely possible
that the “double jeopardy” theorized for adolescence extends to some degree
into the emerging adulthood life stage.
In a review of youth suicide, contagion effects were explored and found
to extend to approximately age 24, after which contagion does not appear to
create clusters of suicides (Gould, Greenberg, Velting, & Shaffer, 2003). Some
suggest that contagion and clustering are not as prevalent as people have
suggested (Haw, Hawton, Niedzwiedz, & Platt, 2013). Either way, efforts to
prevent suicide in tweens through emerging adults have ranged from social
media outreach (www.itgetsbetter.org) through identification of the traits and
structures that promote emerging adults’ use of supportive help to avoid sui-
cide (Wilson, Rickwood, Bushnell, Caputi, & Thomas, 2011). The strong pref-
erence for autonomy as a function of emerging adult development is viewed