The previous chapter considered some of the reasons why gender influences grieving patterns. A key factor or concern was the effect of gender role socialization. This naturally brings into focus the role of culture, since cultural expectations frame gender roles, that is, in every culture there are different expectations about how men and women will both feel and behave.
Gender role norms are but one way that a culture influences grief and the patterns by which grief is experienced and expressed. Culture affects other aspects of the grieving process as well. At a very fundamental level, culture influences the process of attachment. Cultural norms define kinship and regulate social relationships. Culturally based experiences even frame expectations for survival, affecting investment and attachments. Kastenbaum (1971), for example, hypothesizes that in cultures with high rates of child mortality, parental attachment, and even social valuation of children, may be limited until the child reaches puberty and the seeming likelihood of survival. Culture also defines appropriate expressions of grief, ritual practices, and subsequent mourning behavior.
This chapter explores the impact of culture on grief. It begins by first defining culture and then traces its many influences on grief and the grieving process. For culture, too, is a major shaping agent influencing the ways men and women grieve.
Culture is best defined as a way of life. It encompasses both material and nonmaterial aspects of life. Material aspects of a culture refer to all the visible artifacts—clothes, food, and technology—all the items used within the culture. Although the material aspects of a culture are most visible, it is the nonmaterial aspects that are most critical. These refer to beliefs, norms, and values—the ways of thinking, believing, behaving, and relating that truly define the culture. Berger and Luckmann (1966), for example, state that even reality is socially constructed. By that, they mean that culture determines the ways one organizes the world. For example, in cultures such as the United States, kinship is determined bilineally. In other cultures it may be patrilineal or matrilineal. In a patrilineal society, for instance, the sister of one’s mother may not be defined as kin. But all aspects of reality are culturally determined from the ways one understands diseases to how one views the transcendental. And each culture will define its reality differently.
Cultures can be analyzed in several ways. One can distinguish between cultural universals, aspects of the culture that are widely shared; cultural alternates, or choices within a culture; and cultural specialties, or aspects of a culture that are shared by a more limited group. In complex cultures, although there may be some cultural universals, there are often large arrays of specialties and alternates. For example, in the U.S. culture, generally, rules of defining kinship, laws, and certain values such as a shared belief in the worth of education are illustrations of cultural universals. The wide ranges of transportation options or foods are examples of cultural alternates. In fact, some foods that still exist primarily within an ethnic group might be best defined as specialties. One illustration might be that 30 years ago Mexican foods were primarily shared only within that ethnic group or within the Southwest region. Now it has become a widely accepted alternative, readily available in malls, restaurants, and supermarkets. Other examples of specialties would be professional jargon, skills, or beliefs shared only by a small group.
One might also distinguish subcultures or cocultures, which are groups within the larger culture that share many of the universals but have their own mix of cultural alternates and specialties. Although one may often think of ethnic groups as cocultures or subcultures, cultures can also be delineated by other common factors such as class, age, religion, or shared behaviors and lifestyles. An illustration of the latter would be the presence in many urban areas of a robust gay subculture.
Persons enter a culture in two ways. Some may assimilate into a culture, gradually learning its ways. But most commonly, one is born into a culture. Agents of socialization, such as families or schools, socialize individuals into a way of life that becomes the only reality that person knows. The danger, of course, is the possibility that the way of life can become the way of life. Such ethnocentrism may be expressed as a perplexity that other cultures may do things differently or even a belief that one’s own culture is superior, that other ways of viewing or organizing reality are foolish or wrong.
But cultures are not static. Early theorists of social and cultural change tended to view these patterns in sweeping, evolutionary ways. For example, both Hegel (1990) and Marx (1993) saw cultural change as the inevitable result of conflicts arising from contrasting ideas or interests. Sorokin (1937–1941) viewed cultural change more as an everlasting pendulum, swinging over centuries from sensate cultures that emphasized sense experience as an ultimate reality to ideational cultures that see ideas or beliefs as the core of reality. The pendulum shifts because as a culture follows the inevitable path from one pole to the other, it encompasses less of reality. Sorokin might wonder whether the current revival of interest in spirituality may be the death throes of a sensate culture now reaching a crisis point prior to beginning a cultural shift.
However, whether these grand theories account for cultural change, other factors generally have a significant role in changing culture. And as culture changes, the experiences and expressions of grief and death are modified as well.
Industrialization, for instance, has had a significant role in changing the experience of death and grief by changing the very demographics of death. No longer were women and children the most vulnerable populations; now the aged were. This may, as will be explored, influence the experience of attachment and grief. Industrialization affected attachment in other ways as well: It often separated men from the home; child-rearing, once shared, now became more the province of women; and boys no longer worked side by side with their fathers, learning both a trade as well as how to be a man.
Other changes in attachment patterns were evident as well. The communal or civic ties, necessary in an agrarian economy, lessened. Families and individuals now shared stronger ties within the family but looser ties outside. In short, people had attachments but within a small group. Bureaucratization and professionalization removed the care of the dying and the dead from the home to professional caregivers. Death became removed from the everyday experience. Increasing cultural diversity throughout the Western world meant that meanings accorded to death were no longer universally shared.
Such changes tend to breed reactions. The death studies movement has in many ways attempted to “deprofessionalize” death. Hospice, for example, has encouraged families to allow the dying to die at home rather than in institutions. The rise of the self-help movement has attempted to recreate a sense of community among persons who struggle with common issues. The men’s movement has sought to redefine masculinity; yet there is a paradox. These very movements have created new sets of professionals and new norms about ways that individuals should act, die, and grieve.
Thus, culture frames the experience of grief—from who survives, to patterns of attachments, to the norms for expressing grief and mourning. Yet these patterns are not static. They, too, shift as individuals within a culture face new experiences, new ideas or technologies, or new problems.
Implied throughout the earlier section is the notion that cultural experiences and norms affect the experience of grief. This occurs on a very basic level as cultures frame the very nature of attachment. It does this in a number of ways.
First, it may be that, from an evolutionary aspect, grief is an aspect of attachment. Archer (2001), building on Bowlby (1980), observes that grief is common not only in humans but also in other social animals. Since grief is dehabilitating, Archer and Bowlby wondered how it might arise as an aspect of natural selection—what value would it have? Their answer is in order for relationships to persist, a survival necessity, bonds must exist when the other is absent.
Second, as stated earlier, culture defines patterns of kinships and relationships. Societies may also vary in their definition of critical familial roles. For example, in many Christian religions, when a child is baptized (often near birth), the child’s parents may choose godparents or sponsors who promise to take a role in assisting the child in fulfilling religious obligations and supporting the child in his or her faith journey. In many cultures, it is simply an honorary role that has little but ritual significance. But in other cultures, such as many Latino or traditional Italian cultures, the godparents are expected to play a significant role in the child’s development, especially should a child be separated from a parent. A proverb expresses these expectations as well: “Life is so tough that a child needs two sets of parents.” The point is that in such a society, these extra familial attachments can become exceedingly strong.
Similarly, in many subgroups there may exist other ties that bespeak a strong sense of attachment even in the absence of formal kinship. For instance, in some cultures men may be allowed or even expected to have mistresses. In the United States, among gay subcultures, the relationship of lovers or life partners is acknowledged. In short, every culture defines significant relationships, both within and outside kinship lines. These relationships help regulate patterns of attachment and, therefore, influence grief.
Third, not only does a culture define relationships, its norms define the quality and nature of relationships. This occurs on many levels. As mentioned earlier, culture has expectations about survival that may frame attachments. For example, Rosenblatt (1993a) notes that many lower income Brazilian mothers see the death of a child as inevitable. Attachments become limited then, until a child shows promise of longterm survival.
Beyond expectations of survival, culture influences attachment in other ways. Cultural norms define the very meaning of relationships. In some cultures, a wife may be defined as little more than chattel or property, her role being to serve her husband. But in other societies, the norms of the marital relationship may be more companionate. In such times, the death of a spouse has greater meaning, since one has not only experienced the loss of whatever functional role the spouse provided but the loss of a friend and lover as well. Each culture, then, defines the content of roles, affecting the meaning that people experience within the loss.
In addition to the meaning of the relationship, cultural norms influence attachment in other, subtler ways. For example, cultural norms define the amount of investment one places in varied attachments, therefore influencing the experience of grief. Parkes (1996b) provides a useful illustration: In traditional Malaysian society, children are reared within a communal setting. Many “mothers” or parental figures will rear children who are raised in this long-house culture. The loss of a parent then, Parkes suggests, is less traumatic than in a society in which a child is raised by a single set of parents. Parkes’s illustration reminds us of the variety of cultural contexts that influence attachment. For example, in many Western cultures, life is organized around narrowly defined families or small intimate networks. This means that many people are connected to a small network to which they forge strong attachments. In other cultures, the organization of social life is more communal. Here, individuals have a larger number of attachments but these attachments seem less intense. Blauner (1968) notes that such forms of organization are very functional in societies where the death rate is high and unpredictable.
Thompson’s (1995) work also explores the ways that culture influences attachment. Thompson emphasized that varied cultural norms divide life into tasks completed within the private sphere of the family from those done in the public sphere of the larger society. According to Thompson, traditional gender roles in Western societies meant that many men lived life in the public sphere, while most women experienced life more in the private sphere. This meant that, while family losses affected men, they had outlets and roles outside of the family. The experience, though, for women was different. The loss of a family member, such as a child, struck at the center of their world, creating a far different meaning for the loss. Thompson’s observations are supported by the work of Silverman (1981, 1986), who found significant differences in the meaning of widowhood among older men and women. To men, the loss of a spouse meant the end of a significant role. But to women, the loss of a spouse and the assumption of the role of widow meant the end of the significant role of wife, causing a total reassessment of identity not often seen in men.
Naturally, as described earlier, cultures do change, and changing work patterns as well as reformulation of gender roles will lead to constant redefinitions of the meaning of a particular loss. Different generations, too, have distinct experiences that shape a particular cohort, giving rise to new ways of relating to mates, children, and other relationships, changing patterns of attachment as well as norms of expression (e.g., Rotundo, 1993).
Nonetheless, the basic point still can be made that cultures define the nature of the attachments, influencing, then, the very experience of grief.
Cultural norms not only influence the experience of grief but the expression of grief as well. Grief is a social construction (Averill & Nunley, 1993; Rosenblatt, 1993b), that is, that every society recognizes grief as a reaction to loss but also defines the privileges accorded to the bereaved as well as the obligations and restrictions placed on grieving individuals and families. Hochschild (1979) states that every society has “feeling rules” that govern the expression of emotions. Just as norms regulate behavior, feeling rules attempt to regulate the experience and expression of emotion.
A subset of these feeling rules may be called grieving rules (Doka, 1989a). Such rules define whom one may grieve, what one may grieve, how one’s grief is expressed, and how long that grief may be manifested. Grief experienced outside of the parameters of these feeling rules may be disenfranchised, that is, others do not support the griever within the society.
These feeling rules determine not only what losses one can grieve, but also how an individual grieves. Cultures naturally differ in the expectation of how grief is expressed. In some cultures, intense affective displays are normative, even considered an expression of respect. Golden (2009) describes indigenous cultures where open, intense grief is considered food that sustains the deceased as he or she journeys to the afterlife.
But in other cultures, such emotional expression is avoided. For example, in Bali grief is muted because emotional agitation, it is believed, will impede the journey of the deceased, and prayers for the deceased will not be heard unless they are spoken calmly (Rosenblatt, 1993a). In other cultures, feelings are rarely expressed. For example, some cultures are known to be resistant to emotive expression. A common Midwestern joke tells of the taciturn Scandinavian farmer who loved his wife so much that he almost told her. Other cultures may even express grief in violent or angry ways (Rosenblatt, 1993a) or mandate other modes of expression. Rosenblatt (1997) cites for illustration one Pacific atoll. In that culture there is the Ifaluk concept of lalomwieu, which involves a grief response that encompasses sadness, loneliness, and obsessive thinking of the deceased. As Rosenblatt (1997) summarizes, “What emotions are felt, how they are expressed, and how they are understood are matters of culture” (See page).
Naturally, culture will influence the patterns of an individual’s grief. In affectivity expressive cultures, intuitive patterns will be more common. In those that emphasize affective restraint, people are more likely to be socialized into more instrumental patterns. Golden (2009) observes that in many indigenous cultures, men are encouraged to grieve in active ways—singing, drumming, or dancing.
Culture too may create unique and sometimes gender-specific ways of offering support. In some cultures, men and women support grieving people of the same gender (Golden, 2009). In other cultures, unique ways may be developed to offer support in culturally attuned yet genderappropriate ways. For example, for the Inupiats, a Native Alaskan people, each gender has specific roles during the funeral ritual. Since the group lives on the tundra, the ground is often frozen. Burial then takes days as hot water is continually boiled and poured on the ground to thaw it so it can be scraped. The men dig as adolescent boys bring in the continuing vats of hot water. The older men carve the memorial while the women cook and boil water. At night, the tribe feasts together, remembering and dancing. In one visit the men of the tribe decided to have a grief group in a smoke lodge—a place for purification. The men spoke of their losses—disembodied voices unseen through the smoke—offering a powerful illustration of melding old and new ways of therapeutic interaction (Doka, 1997). Rituals, too, may differ even within a society by factors such as gender. In Madagascar, for illustration, there are two huts for rituals or grieving: a “male house,” where men meet to organize rituals for laying the body and a “house of tears,” where women come together to wail and cry.
However, it is critical to remember that cultural influences are but one shaping agent. It is likely that other factors are equally important shapers of an individual’s grieving pattern. Therefore, it is not unusual that any given individual’s experience of grief will be at variance with culturally approved patterns of expression or adaptation. In such cases, dissonant varieties may be prevalent. And in such cases, individuals may pay a price as they experience this discord between their experience of grief and allowable expression. For example, Parkes (1996a) suggested that one result of affective control in Rwanda has been the outbursts of genocidal violence. Similarly, Parkes viewed the Navajos, where the deceased’s name is never mentioned once they die as a form of cognitive suppression that often led to depression.
It also should be recognized that in many cultures, especially those that are diverse and complex, the grieving rules might mirror that complexity and diversity. For example, in countries like the United States, with many large cultural subgroups, individuals may be exposed to a range of grieving rules—some that allow affect and others that discourage it. These differences may even exist within bicultural families where children receive mixed messages on appropriate ways to grieve (Rosenblatt, 1993b). One of the authors comes from a Hispanic-Hungarian family. He has often commented that his Hispanic uncles would encourage tears— reminding him, even as a child, that they were signs of love. At the same time his Hungarian uncles would squeeze his shoulder reminding him “to be strong.” Feeling rules, then, can be varied within a society or even a family.
In other cases, larger cultural forces that may affect subcultures differently may heavily influence expressions of grief. Anger, for example, is identified as a persistent issue in African American males—a result of persistent racism and discrimination (Franklin, 1998) that may emerge in both expressions of grief and types of support accepted (Rosenblatt & Wallace, 2005).
These grieving rules are not static but rather can change over time. Biddle and Walter (1998) note that among the grieving rules in England are two predominant patterns. Private grief is, they claim, the traditional perspective. Here the feeling rules require that people grieve in private, giving subtle hints that their grief is, in fact, deeply felt but that they are maintaining a stoical appearance to spare others. Others, in turn, are expected to admire the stoicism, especially since it comes at such a cost. Biddle and Walter suggested that this notion of private grief was the result of broad social changes such as the romantic movement that stressed the unique nature of relationships and the concept that each person’s pain was unique and private. Walter (2008) suggests that this too was a natural development of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on individuality that affirmed that each loss was singular. The other pattern, called “expressive grief,” Biddle and Walter identified as a more recent transplant from the United States. Here, open emotional expression is valued. To Walter (2008), the women’s movement was a significant factor, allowing more feminine notions of grief to be expressed within the public sphere. Perhaps the budding men’s movement and the new psychology of men may have a similar impact on increasing affective expression in men. This change, it should be noted, is yet to be evidenced. Hayslip and Han (2009) in a review of the literature on cultural change find evidence that over time Americans now place greater emphasis on emotional control.
In some cases, too, the grieving rules may change throughout the course of grief. For example, in the United States emotional expression is encouraged early in the grieving period but not later. The result is that it is the instrumental griever who may experience disenfranchisement early in the loss, while the intuitive griever feels disenfranchised later in the loss when affective responses are less valued and accepted. This is evident in workplace policies. Most employers accord a period of time off for bereavement leave, generally 3 to 5 days. After this period of affective catharsis, employees are expected to quickly return to prior work patterns, compartmentalizing their grief. As time goes on, affective expression is less supported.
People who fail to follow grieving norms face community sanctions. For example, in one famous Australian case, Lindy Chamberlain claimed a dingo, or wild dog, attacked and dragged off her sleeping baby. The mother’s absence of strong affect caused suspicion among police, especially since her husband responded in a more emotional manner. She was charged with and convicted of the child’s murder; later, her conviction was overturned. The case still generates strong controversy in Australia and debates over the mother’s actual guilt. The point of this case is simply that her failure to grieve in a prescribed manner was considered strong evidence of guilt. Similarly, someone who after the initial period continues to express affect may experience the withdrawal of support and criticism, especially at work, over the ways that person is grieving.
This raises another dimension of these grieving rules. These rules may differ by gender. Hence, in some societies women may be expected or allowed to show more emotion, while in others no such distinctions are made (Rosenblatt, Walsh, & Jackson, 1976). Those who are seen as conforming to these gender roles receive more support then those who are seen as nonconforming. The Lindy Chamberlain case was a good example of that. In the Outback of Australia, men are expected to be stoic. The fact that Michael Chamberlain was emotional and his wife was not highlighted suspicion. This shows a strange bias often evident in grief but not in other areas. In many aspects of life, at least in the United States and other Western cultures, gender-conforming behaviors are more supported in males. Compare, for example, the cultural meanings attached to terms like tomboy as contrasted with sissy. However, in grief, men who are nonconforming, at least in the initial period of grief, are accorded more freedom to be nonconforming. A man with more instrumental patterns may be seen as “stoic,” while one with more intuitive patterns, at least in many social milieus, may be viewed as “sensitive.” However, women with more instrumental patterns may be labeled as “cold.”
Grieving rules vary, too, within a society. They may vary by ethnicity as different subcultures may have their own distinct ways that people express grief (Kalish & Reynolds, 1981). Naturally, as groups become more assimilated, these norms may lose their distinctiveness. One client, for illustration, who was Hispanic, spoke of his discomfort at the older generation who wailed at the casket of his grandmother. He was insightful enough to acknowledge that his older relatives were, in all probability, equally appalled by the absence of wailing in the younger generation.
Grieving rules vary not only by ethnicity but also by other factors such as age, gender, or class. (The issue of gender is considered in Chapter 7.) But Rosenblatt et al.’s (1976) research demonstrated that in many cultures grieving rules clearly varied by gender. In a study of 60 societies, they found that while close to 50% (32) demonstrated no differences between genders in crying in grief, the remainder (28) did allow more affective expressions in women.
Differences may also result from development and social class. Generally, societies permit the very young and sometimes the very old greater freedom in expression. As Rotundo (1993) notes, one mark of adulthood is the ability to conform to normative standards.
Social class, too, can create distinctions. In each social class, gender role norms as well as norms governing grief may encourage different responses to loss. For example, in some classes, anger, even violence, may be an acceptable expression of grief. In other classes the expectation may be that responses are more muted. Biddle and Walter (1998), for example, describe the upper-class English feeling rules that emphasize that the well-bred person gives no indication of inner emotion. Class may affect other forms of adaptation. Barrett (1998) in his work on African American funerals noted a strong class difference. Lower income African Americans were more likely to have highly emotional services, whereas middle-class African Americans preferred more formal and reserved rituals.
There may even be occupational subcultures that affirm their own grieving rules. For example, in the early and middle of the 20th century, many health professions viewed any public manifestation of grief over the death of a patient as “unprofessional.” Other professions such as law enforcement may favor stoical responses. As Sue and Sue (2008) indicate, the culture of counseling tends to highly value affective expression in general but especially in grief. Rosenblatt (1993a, 1993b) notes the danger in a culturally diverse society when counselors project onto their clients their own social prescriptions of acceptable ways to grieve.
Cultures differ not only in feeling rules but also in other ways as well, such as rituals in and norms on appropriate adaptive and mourning behaviors. Every culture has distinct rituals by which death is acknowledged. In some cultures, these rituals may continue for a time after the loss, marking periods of mourning. For example, with Judaism, there are a series of rituals that take place both at points within a year after the loss as well as at other occasions. Other cultures may have rituals that recognize little beyond the disposition of the dead.
Mourning behaviors vary, too. In some cultures, people may mark mourning by wearing certain clothes for a period of time, perhaps even for life. It may be appropriate or inappropriate to speak of the deceased or to use the name again. In each society, rules and norms govern adaptation.
Naturally, individuals are socialized to these norms through a variety of socialization agents such as family, religious, and educational institutions. Nadeau’s (1998) work reminds us that family often becomes the key agent in socializing individuals to the appropriate ways that grief may be experienced and expressed. It is families that employ cultural meanings as they attempt to make sense of loss and grief. And it is in the family that the experience, expression, and adaptation to grief are validated.
This chapter emphasizes that one of the critical shaping agents in determining grieving patterns is provided by cultures. Although individuals within a culture will vary, cultural norms will strongly influence the experience of grief, as well as the patterns by which individuals express and adapt to grief. These standards may influence grieving in a number of ways. They make one pattern more dominant in a given culture, or they influence the fact that certain genders or classes or other groupings may be more inclined toward one pattern than another. But because culture is one shaping agent, individuals may find that their experience and expression of grief varies from cultural expectations. This may result in possible negative outcomes. When individuals find their experience and expression of grief varies from these cultural expectations, their grief may be disenfranchised, limiting social support and complicating grief.