Born Into a Mourning Family: Life After the Loss of a Child

Families who experience the death of a child are forever altered. Parents do not expect to outlive their children. They usually have a profound bond with their child, and look to their offspring as the holder of the family’s aspirations and future. The loss of a child is life-altering, frequently impacting a parent’s identity, worldview, and approach to parenting.

Source: Multimedia collage, Sarah Vollmann

Those who are born after the death of a sibling—who are often referred to as subsequent children or replacement children—are born into an altered family landscape. They grow up and live with the repercussions of their family's loss. In some cases, subsequent children inherit elements of their parents’ grief and trauma, in a process known as a transgenerational transmission. When a transgenerational transmission of grief and trauma occurs, children absorb some of the psychological burdens of their parents.

The transgenerational transmission of trauma and grief has been commonly observed in the offspring of genocide survivors, such as the children of Holocaust survivors. Studies have shown that the children of genocide survivors often deeply identify with the experience of their parents, as if they went through it themselves. Bergmann & Jucovey (1990) explain that “the children of survivors show symptoms which would be expected if they had actually lived through the Holocaust. The children come to feel that the Holocaust is the single most critical event that has affected their lives, although it occurred before they were born.”

There are important distinctions between those born after a genocide and those born after the death of a sibling, and the two experiences cannot be compared. One small parallel exists, however, which is a susceptibility for familial trauma and loss that can be passed down across generations.

There are many ways that a transgenerational transmission can take place. If we imagine the experience of an infant who is parented by a grieving or traumatized parent, we can understand that even before verbal communication occurs, the baby might absorb the parent’s sadness, stress, or absence. (Shoshan, 1989.) A parent’s trauma can even be transmitted in the same manner as some hereditary diseases. The genetic memory code of a traumatized parent might be passed down to the child through electrochemical processes in the brain. Memories of fear can be carried across generations, through genes and physiological processes. (Kellermann, 2001.) Grief can be transmitted across generations as well. When families struggle to mourn, a pattern of complicated grief may be passed down from one generation to the next. (Lieberman, 1979.)

Subsequent children are sometimes the recipients of a transgenerational transmission of trauma and loss. Their families' narratives of grief may become a central part of their identity and lived experience, and they might absorb the trauma and grief of their parents. Fraiberg, Adelson, and Shapiro (1975) refer to a phenomenon of “ghosts in the nursery” explaining that “intruders” from a parent’s past sometimes take up residence in a family’s life. A parental history of tragedy or trauma can overpower and influence present family dynamics, “inflicting the parent’s past upon the child.” They believe that these “intruders” are more likely to appear when a parent has repressed their difficult history.

The transgenerational transmission of trauma and loss can be detrimental to the development and wellbeing of the subsequent generation. "To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one's birth, is to risk having one's own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present." (Hirsch, 2012.)