Living on behalf of a lost only child: a unique grief coping strategy for China's shidu parents

Background: Bereaved parents face substantial mental health risks. In addition to seeking help from mental health professionals, bereaved parents often adopt their own grief coping strategies. Among these, some Chinese parents who have lost their only child (shidu parents) adopt a unique, culturally shaped coping strategy known as 'living on behalf of the child.'Methods: A purposive sampling method was used in this study to invite shidu parents who were living on behalf of the child to participate in interviews. In total, 10 interviewees were included in the analysis; specifically, 8 participated by telephone, and 2 participated face-to-face. A thematic analysis was performed to code the data and extract themes.Results: For China's shidu parents, living on behalf of the child refers to doing what the child was doing when the child was still alive, doing things that the child wanted to do but had not been able to do, fulfilling the child's unmet responsibilities, maintaining relationships with the child's friends, and experiencing life from the child's perspective. This approach supports shidu parents by helping them regain a sense of purpose in life, improve their emotional stability, and increase their level of interpersonal support; however, it may also increase their level of life stress.Conclusion: As a culturally unique grief coping strategy, living on behalf of the child is practiced among shidu parents as they adjust part of their identity from being parents to being children. This strategy facilitates meaning reconstruction among shidu parents. The effects of this strategy on shidu parents are mainly positive. However, some negative effects can also occur, which makes finding an appropriate balance necessary.