Family Structure Can Affect Grief

With more and more U.S. single parents, blended families and step and half-siblings, some are "shut-out" of an illness or funeral, a U.S. expert said. Diana Nash, a professor of psychology at Marymount Manhattan College in New York and a counselor specializing in grief and bereavement, said ex-spouses and first children of the deceased can be left out of an illness and funeral because the new family doesn't want them around.

Published September 24, 2007.