Communication and Disenfranchised Grief

Abstract

It's a painful reality for many pet owners that at some point there will come a time when they must grieve the loss of their animal companion. In fact, the death of a pet is perhaps one of the most common sources of stress that families experience, occurring almost two times more frequently than stress associated with children leaving home. However, the profound sense of anguish one feels after losing their pet is often invalidated, unrecognized, or unsupported by others. Doka refers to this stifling of the grieving process as disenfranchised grief, where individuals are sometimes shamed, dismissed, or discouraged from experiencing/expressing grief. Despite a growing body of literature detailing the experience of pet loss, few scholars have explored how this type of loss is communicatively disenfranchised and managed. Thus, the current chapter surveys scholarship on human-pet relationships and disenfranchised grief in order to develop a research agenda for communication scholars interested in studying disenfranchised grief, pet loss, or the intersection of these topics.