Orphaned Parents
Orphaned Parents means parents who have lost a child.
The German term orphaned parents , taken from Harriet Schiff's book , became the name for parents who have lost a child through death. Self-help groups of these parents also called themselves that. The name was taken over by the associations that were formed, later by the Federal Association of Orphaned Parents in Germany, founded in 1977
The term orphaned parents was coined by Friedrich Rückert , whose children Ernst and Louise died of scarlet fever in 1833 at the age of three and five respectively. In memory of her he wrote 446 Kindertodtenlieder , five of which Gustav Mahler set to music in 1905 . In one of the songs there is the passage "... there we sat, orphaned parents" . The term was adopted in 1978 in a German book title by Harriet S. Schiff, in the English original The Bereaved Parent .
The death of a child - unlike that of an elderly person - is generally perceived as "abnormal" and so relatives, friends, acquaintances, but also authorities, and helping professions such as undertakers and emergency services are often helpless towards orphaned parents. The loss of a child often plunges the family left behind into a serious crisis. This happens in the different constellations, when dealing with a child during pregnancy, during birth or in the period afterwards, in infancy (e.g. through sudden infant death syndrome), but also in later phases of life up to adulthood. A wide variety of causes of death are also included in the situation, such as serious illness, accident, suicide or homicide.
The grief for the deceased child is felt to be particularly intense and painful and often lasts for many years. It is often cyclical. Birthdays, anniversaries, but also everyday occurrences and encounters repeatedly bring memories of the child to light and make the loss (as in other mourning constellations) painfully aware.
Development from the self-help movement
In 1968, an initially loose association of affected parents formed in Great Britain, who founded the Society of The Compassionate Friends on January 29, 1969 . There are numerous similar organizations around the world. In Germany, the first groups formed in the 1980s, some of which developed further in the founding of associations, such as the Rainbow Initiative in 1983 , the associations Verwaiste Eltern München eV and Verwaiste Eltern Hamburg eV in 1990 , and orphan parents Steinhagen eV in 1993
literature
- Federal Association of Orphaned Parents and Mourning Siblings in Germany eV (Ed.), Petra Hohn (Editor), Beate Bahnert (Editor): 1997-2017. 20 years of VEID. Helping people help themselves. The development of the Federal Association of Orphaned Parents and Siblings in Germany eV , Leipzig 2017.
- Petra Hohn: Suddenly without a child. 2nd, revised edition 2013, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013, ISBN 978-3579068206 .
- Maureen Grimm and Anja Sommer: Born quietly . Panama Verlag , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-938714-13-3 .
- Dennis Klass , Ulrike Winkler (translation): Parents mourning souls life. The spiritual life of grieving parents. Würzburg 2010, (Original title: The spiritual lives of bereaved parents, Routledge 1999, ISBN 978-0876309902 ) ISBN 978-3-930823-02-4 .
- Harriet S. Schiff: Orphaned Parents. With an afterword by Christoph Student . 2nd revised and expanded edition. Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7831-1054-8 .
- Christine Fleck-Bohaumilitzky , Christian Fleck: When children die before their parents. A companion for orphaned parents. Stuttgart March 2008, ISBN 978-3783129311 .
- Dennis Klass: Parental grief. Solace and resolution (= Springer series on death and suicide, volume 9), New York 1988, ISBN 978-0826-1593-04