What is it about?
This study explored how young children make sense of death, using a creative method called Photovoice. Thirteen 5-year-olds from two Greek kindergartens were asked to take photographs of "something no longer alive" and then talked about their pictures in one-on-one interviews. Analysing what the children said, the researchers found that preschoolers understand death through four main lenses: thinking about the body's basic needs no longer working, wondering whether something like a soul continues on, trying to work out what causes death, and drawing on spiritual or religious ideas they've picked up from family and culture. The findings show that even very young children are already building a rich, multi-layered understanding of death, and the study points to a need for age-appropriate ways of talking with children about this difficult topic, both at home and in early education settings.
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Why is it important?
Death is one of the last taboo topics in early childhood settings, as adults often assume young children are too immature to grapple with it, so conversations get avoided or oversimplified. This study challenges that assumption by giving children themselves the tools to lead the conversation, rather than relying on adults to guess what they understand. Using Photovoice — letting children take their own photographs rather than just answering direct questions — is a rare and child-centred approach in death studies, and it captures nuance that traditional interviews often miss, especially the blending of biological, existential, and spiritual reasoning that children construct on their own. The findings matter now because early childhood educators, families, and health professionals increasingly need practical, evidence-based guidance for supporting children through loss, whether from bereavement, pandemic-related deaths, war, or environmental crises. By showing that preschoolers already hold sophisticated, culturally shaped ideas about death, this research equips educators and caregivers with a clearer starting point: conversations about death don't need to wait until children are "old enough," they need to meet children where their thinking already is. Ultimately, this work can inform more sensitive, developmentally appropriate death education and bereavement support in kindergartens, giving children a safer and more honest space to process one of life's most difficult realities.
Perspectives
What draws me to this research is a conviction I've carried through years of studying early relationships and intersubjectivity: children are far more capable meaning-makers than we often give them credit for. Death is a topic adults instinctively soften or postpone, but in my professional and research experience, children are already forming their own frameworks for understanding loss — quietly, often without the words to articulate it unless we give them the right tools. Using Photovoice with these children felt like an invitation rather than an interrogation; it let them show what mattered to them, rather than us deciding in advance what a "correct" answer might look like. I was struck by how naturally the children wove together the biological, the causal, and the spiritual, reminding me that meaning-making in early childhood is rarely one-dimensional.
Dr Kornilia Hatzinikolaou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Framing mortality: Preschoolers’ views on death through photovoice, Death Studies, July 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/07481187.2025.2533249.
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