Zweig, R. Children’s attitudes toward death.

OVERVIEW

This research compares black and white children’s attitudes toward death.

PURPOSE

What are black children’s attitudes toward death? How do they compare to white children’s attitudes?

How are these attitudes related to age, gender, and experience with death?

What are the sources of these attitudes?

DESIGN

• "Black" group: black Christian children from a lower socio-economic group, including 68 females and 47 males between 8 and 12 years of age.
• "White" group: twenty-three children attending a Jewish Sunday School, the majority of whom were male.

FINDINGS

Seventy-five percent of black children had experienced a death in the family.

Black children believed the following:

• People die because someone is mad at them and wants them to die.
• Crying helps a person express his sadness over the death of a loved one.

Differences between black and white children:

• Blacks more often than whites attribute death to aggression.
• Blacks learn more about death from available sources.
• Blacks express a greater fear of death than whites.
• Blacks were more likely to believe that their parents view death as a long sleep and were more likely to believe in heaven.
• Blacks believe less in the finality of death than do whites.
• Blacks believe in a deathman.

CONCLUSIONS

• Black children’s belief in a deathman is most likely a result of cultural influences incorporated into myths and relayed to children on the occasion of the death of someone they knew.
• All groups learned more about death from reading than from TV, school, or religious training. Children are reluctant to discuss death, although they have frequent thoughts about it.
• Both groups have a fear of death, although blacks have a greater fear of death than whites. Whites believe other groups have a greater fear than they do.
• Black children’s view of death as a transition is more related to their cultural norms than to their cognitive understanding.
• Blacks are prepared to accept death.
• Females, as a group, learned more about death than males did.

Youth leaders can help children discuss feelings and attitudes about death, because families seldom talk about this issue.

Rick Ghent cCYS