Widowed parents who enjoy close relationships with their adult children still struggle with loneliness, according to the first study of its kind.

Published in Aging & Mental Health, the analysis spanning 25 years, was based on interviews with more than 5,500 men and women, including those whose spouse had died.

The findings contradict commonly held assumptions that indicate widowed parents experience much lower levels of loneliness than those without children.

Although the bond between bereaved women and their offspring is strengthened, the authors of this new study say this is insufficient to fill the emotional void left after the death of a spouse.

The researchers did not look at relationships between widowed people and the people they know aside from family. However, the authors suggest ties with others outside the home could potentially be more important than those with offspring.

The mental challenges faced by the surviving spouse in a marriage are highlighted by the research. The findings show emotional loneliness—feelings of missing an intimate attachment—rises significantly after a death and continues for a long time. However, loneliness arising from missing a wider social network is more delayed.

“Our study makes an important contribution to the literature on loneliness and intergenerational relationships in the context of widowhood,” says lead author, Maximilian Tolkamp, a Research Associate at the University of Siegen, Germany.

“The findings indicate that widowhood is linked to persistent increases in loneliness. It also fosters stronger parent-child relationships, particularly for mothers, who often act as kin-keepers within the family.

“However, while widowhood appears to strengthen certain aspects of the parent-child relationship, these improvements do not mitigate increases in either social or emotional loneliness.”

The death of a spouse is one of life’s most stressful events. Evidence suggests widowhood is to blame for physical issues such as heart conditions and mental health problems including chronic loneliness.

Loneliness is commonly defined as a perceived or real gap between an individual’s actual social relationships and how they would like them to be. People may become sad or even depressed.

Research has focused on how different people react to losing their spouse. Studies have been aimed at finding ways to lessen widowhood’s negative consequences.

Emotional loneliness often happens abruptly after death and social loneliness tends to occur more gradually. Previous studies have suggested being a parent at an older age may buffer feelings of loneliness following widowhood.

In this latest research, the authors examined changes in loneliness levels using information on 5,610 married people with adult children. Of these, a total of 475 became widowed—176 men and 299 women—during the analysis which spanned 1996 to 2021. The mean age at widowhood was 72.56 years.

Data came from the German Aging Survey (DEAS), a nationwide study of the lives of people from age 40 onward. The DEAS was used to analyze whether widowhood was linked with an improvement in the quality of the parent-child relationship and if this reduces loneliness after a spouse’s death.

Participants were asked to score a series of statements according to how much each reflected their feelings. A sense of missing emotional security and warmth, feeling rejected, and having enough people to rely on when problems arose were among themes covered.

Researchers also asked how often widowed people and those with a living spouse wrote to, visited or spoke on the phone with each adult child; and the extent of emotional closeness. Frequent contact was defined as seeing or speaking to a child at least once a week. Infrequent was one to three times a month or less.

With emotional loneliness, the three years following widowhood were the worst compared to the three years before a partner died. Significant increases also occurred between four to seven years after a spouse’s death.

Increases in social loneliness were less pronounced. Men reported a rise four to seven years after a bereavement, but for women there was no difference compared to the three years before widowhood.

Mothers reported more frequent contact and greater emotional closeness with their children after spousal loss, whereas men did not report comparable changes.

Concluding, co-author, Professor Matthias Pollmann-Schult, also at Siegen, adds, “These findings were surprising to us, as prior research has shown that the well-being of older parents is strongly influenced by the quality of their relationships with adult children.

“It appears, however, that the impact of spousal loss is too profound to be substantially alleviated by even strong emotional and social support from one’s children.”

The authors now hope that their results will demonstrate to policymakers that targeted interventions should address the increasing feelings of loneliness of the widowed. As demonstrated by these findings, family ties cannot be solely relied on as a protective factor.

The team, however, does acknowledge that their analysis is restricted to how changes in parent-child relationships are associated with loneliness. The study did not consider ties between widowed people and people they were not related to. Interactions with ‘non-kin’ may have a greater impact on levels of social loneliness than interactions with one’s children,” say the authors.

Additionally, as preliminary analyses looking at age-related differences in loneliness (both the age of their widow or widower and the age of their children) showed no significant effects, these results were not included in the paper.