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Evidence Library · For your partner

For the partner: after a loss

You are expected to be the supporter rather than the bereaved, and that has a name.

A systematic review of 46 studies of men's grief after miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for fetal anomaly and neonatal death found that their experiences are highly varied, and that current grief measures may not capture all of the complexities of grief for men.

What it identified as distinctively difficult was not the grief itself but the position: expectations to support female partners, and a lack of social recognition for their grief and subsequent needs. The review's term for this is double-disenfranchised grief. You are grieving, you are cast as the person who supports the grieving, and the loss is not socially recognised as yours.

Most partners recognise that description immediately, and most have never heard it named.

What is known, and what is notPartners do experience depression and anxiety after a loss, generally at lower levels than the woman. That much is consistent across independent reviews. Fathers may also develop post-traumatic stress after a stillbirth, though that is reported as a possibility rather than as a measured rate.

What nobody can tell you is how common any of it is. A systematic review of fathers after stillbirth and neonatal death states plainly that case prevalence is unknown. This guide will not print a number, because there is not an honest one to print.

Two practical things follow. Support offered to bereaved families is almost always addressed to the woman, so if you need it you will usually have to ask rather than be offered. And the expectation that you will hold everything together is not a duty anyone actually assigned you. It is a default that no one examined.

Note that the entire literature here is about men. Same-sex partners and non-birthing mothers appear in it barely at all.

Where this comes from:
445. Obst KL, Due C, Oxlad M, Middleton P. Men's grief following pregnancy loss and neonatal loss: a systematic review and emerging theoretical model. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2020;20(1):11.
446. Farren J, Mitchell-Jones N, Verbakel JY, Timmerman D, Jalmbrant M, Bourne T. The psychological impact of early pregnancy loss. Hum Reprod Update. 2018;24(6):731-749.
449. Badenhorst W, Riches S, Turton P, Hughes P. The psychological effects of stillbirth and neonatal death on fathers: systematic review. J Psychosom Obstet Gynaecol. 2006;27(4):245-256.

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