Monuments for stillborn children and disenfranchised grief in the Netherlands Recognition, protest and solace

Abstract

In the Netherlands, until the years mid eighty of the previous century, in accordance with the so called ‘breaking bonds’ paradigm at the time, children who had died around birth, were immediately separated from the parents. There and above, Roman Catholic rules dictated that children who had not been baptized before they died, would be buried anonymously in hideaway, and in the unconsecrated grounds of the graveyard. This article discusses these parents and their stillborn children. Their loss and grief remained for a long time unacknowledged, resulting in feelings of disenfranchised grief. These feelings increased as a result of the shift of paradigm into continuing bonds with a deceased, developing into the nowadays empathic and intimate contact between parents and stillborn children. With the emergence as of the year 2000 of monuments to stillborn children (in the Netherlands around 160 in total),monuments have become a strategy to cope with feelings of disenfranchised grief.This article concludes that parents of stillborn children benefit from an honourable place to commemorate and pay respect to their long-time publicly neglected child.