Currently, there are approximately 2,213,000 children and adolescents younger than 18 (3.4%) in the United States who have experienced the death of a parent (Social Security Administration, 2000). Recent reviews have provided consistent evidence that bereavement is significantly related to depressive symptoms, withdrawal problems, and academic problems (Dowdney, 2000; Lutzke, Ayers, Sandler, & Barr, 1997; Tremblay & Israel, 1998). Multiple studies also show relations between parental death and clinical levels of mental disorder. For example, using a structured diagnostic instrument, Gersten, Beals, and Kallgren (1991) found that 9.8% of bereaved children in a representative community sample met criteria for major depression as compared to 1.3% of matched controls. Also, Worden (1996) reported that 2 years following parental death, 21% of bereaved children were above the clinical cut-point for internalizing or externalizing problems on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991a) versus 3% of the comparison samplemotivational theory of stress (Sandler, 2001; Skinner & Wellborn, 1994, 1997), major life events such as parental death affect mental health problems because they threaten basic needs. Skinner and Wellborn (1994, 1997) have argued that such events threaten the needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Sandler (2001) proposed that stressors embedded within these major life transitions lead to higher mental health problems by threatening satisfaction of a similar set of basic needs, positive self-worth, social relatedness and control, and that protective resources reduce mental health problems either by directly promoting need satisfaction or by decreasing the negative effects of stressors on need satisfaction. According to Sandler (2001), children construe themselves in relation to their social context around these needs through internal self-system belief sets; self-system beliefs are viewed as reflecting the degree of fulfillment of basic needs. This paper tests whether two central aspects of children's post-parental bereavement environments, recent stressors and caregiver-child relationship quality, affect mental health problems through their influence on three self-system beliefs selected on the basis of theoretical and empirical work with children experiencing parental bereavement: fear of abandonment (sense of social relatedness), self-esteem (evaluation of self-worth), and coping efficacy (sense of control over one's problems).

The theoretical argument for the mediational role of these beliefs requires that post-death stressors and caregiver-child relationship quality influence these self-system beliefs as well as the development of mental health problems of bereaved children. The argument also requires postulating theoretical mechanisms by which stressors and caregiver-child relationships affect these beliefs and by which these beliefs in turn affect mental health problems. Below we review theory and existing evidence with bereaved samples for each of these relations; where evidence is sparse concerning bereaved children, we draw from the broader literature on children who have experienced other adversities.

Multiple researchers have found positive relations between stressors and parentally bereaved children's mental health problems (e.g., Sandler, Gersten, Reynolds, Kallgren, & Ramirez, 1988; Sandler, Reynolds, Kliewer, & Ramirez, 1992). In this research, parental death is conceptualized as involving a series of stressors occurring before and after the death of the parent that affects multiple arenas of children's lives. Parental death can lead to decreased economic resources, change in residence, loss of contact with friends and neighbors, increased expectations and responsibilities, loss of time with the surviving parent, and change in caretakers. Researchers have demonstrated that such stressors mediate the relation between parental death and children's mental health problems (Thompson, Kaslow, Price, Williams, & Kingree, 1998; West, Sandler, Pillow, Baca, & Gersten, 1991).

Death of one's spouse includes a broad array of experiences that are likely to affect the quality of the caregiver-child relationship and diminish its protective ability. After the death, caregivers need to cope with stressors such as financial hardship, moving, development of relationships with new partners, and additional household and work responsibilities, as well as with their own grief-related emotions. Dealing with these stressors is likely to result in caregivers having less time to spend with children, being less supportive and emotionally available to them, and being less effective in reinforcing positive behaviors. It is also likely that these stressors limit the caregiver's ability to be consistent in monitoring and disciplining children's misbehavior and to provide children with esteem-enhancing interactions. Further, because of task overload, these caregivers may be impatient and negative in their interactions with their children. Researchers have consistently found that positive caregiver-child relationships are significantly associated with fewer post-death mental health problems (Partridge & Kotler, 1987; Raveis, Siegel, & Karus, 1999; Sandler et al., 1988, 1992; West et al., 1991). For example, Raveis et al. (1999) reported that children who described their surviving parent as being more open to hearing their concerns and trying to understand how they felt had lower anxiety and depression. West et al. (1991) found that the warmth of the surviving parent-child relationship partially mediated the relations between parental death and children's mental health problems. Sandler et al.'s (1992, 2003) experimental evaluations of preventive interventions for parentally bereaved families provide strong evidence of the effects of caregiver warmth on children's mental health problems. Analyses indicated that these programs led to increased caregiver warmth and that improvement in warmth accounted for change in mental health problems (Sandler et al., 1992; Tein, Sandler, Ayers, & Wolchik, 2004). Although not as well studied as the affective component of parenting, research indicates that effective discipline is related to better adjustment of bereaved children (Strength, 1991; Worden, 1996).