Date of Conferral

3-12-2024

Date of Award

March 2024

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Megan Corley

Abstract

Law enforcement officers (LEOs) work in careers that can be demanding, stressful, and traumatizing. Although researchers have explored vicarious, or secondary, trauma as it relates to a LEO bringing their experiences at work into the home environment, influencing their spouse or partner’s mental and physical well-being, they have not yet investigated how a LEO’s experience of a child death while on-duty might affect their parenting styles. The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the parenting styles that LEOs use or change when they have experienced a traumatic incident at work, specifically a child death. The study was a transcendental phenomenological inquiry that featured in-depth interviews with eight LEOs. The interview responses were coded and categorized to identify the following themes encompassing participants’ perceptions and lived experience: vigilance and hypersensitivity to child safety, emotional intensity of the situation, cumulative effect of multiple experiences, adjustments in parenting style over time, career journey, early officer career experiences, and the emotional impact on officers. The study findings provide insight into how participants who had experienced an on-duty child death perceived its impact on their parenting style. Insight into this dynamic may be useful for positive social change to mental health clinicians, chaplains, peer support programmers, and leaders of police agencies in identifying and implementing targeted mental health treatment for officers and their families following extremely traumatic events.

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