My Replacement Child Legacy and Additional Research

In November 2016, Psychology Today published my first narrative about my replacement child legacy. Since that time, and since the 2017 publication of my book, When Will I Be Good Enough: A Replacement Child’s Journey to Healing, much more has been written and researched about replacement children as a more formalized, acknowledged group. Replacement child syndrome is regarded as parents replacing a deceased infant with another pregnancy and subsequent child (Robertson & Kavanaugh, 1998). Parents might experience unresolved grief in letting go of their deceased child. In addition, parents might be emotionally unavailable and might have challenging relationships with the new child, which can affect him/her later in life. To address such issues, the Replacement Child Forum was created by Judy Mandel, Rita Battat, and Kristina Schellinski. More recently, Schellinski co-founded a new network, Replacement Child Professionals, which provides clinicians with skills and solutions. Schellinski’s own experience as a replacement child is an outstanding overview of her experiences and research in her 2020 book, Individuation for Adult Replacement Children: Ways of Coming into Being.

The author with her book.

Source: Courtesy of bjaffe

As a child born to replace my dead brother, I never viewed myself as a victim of these circumstances or that I was anything less than wanted. When I was very little, it never entered my mind that I was a replacement for my dead brother Jeffrey, yet my mother often told me that she only wanted two children. Once my critical thinking skills developed, though, I asked myself the eternal question: If Jeffrey had lived, where would I be? I remember asking my mother as well, and she just looked exasperated and didn’t respond with the words I had hoped for: My greatest joy was having you as my child. What she did say, years later, when I told her the good news that I was pregnant with our third child, was, “Why are you having another? Haven’t you heard of that surgery they do?” I responded, “Where would I be if you had had that same surgery?” She angrily retorted, “That was different, Barbara.” End of conversation.

While my parents loved me, my mother, conditionally, and my father unconditionally, I grew up with a complicated emotional latticework. I often felt uneasy in my skin, unsure of my own wants and desires. I usually deferred to whoever had the stronger personality: my girlfriends, my brother, and generally, my mother. I often felt as if I were swimming upstream in my childhood pool as I began to question the most basic issues. Why were there pictures of a toddler throughout the house, yet we weren’t permitted to talk about him or ask questions? Why did my mother stay in bed for hours, so exhausted? Why were her shades drawn? Why wasn’t she joyful to participate in many of our family outings?

So many times, I wondered, and I asked “why.” Often, my annoyed mother responded in silence or with your usual words: “Don’t ask so many questions. Don’t make me upset.” I swallowed my questions and found the answers in the candy, cookies, ice cream, and pizza that provided the solace I needed.

I witnessed my almost seven-year older brother, Stephen, in many ways, in charge of the house, wrapping my mother around his little finger. She laughed at his jokes and teased him in the joyful way a parent does with a child who seemingly possesses a similar personality. He was not the reminder of heartbreak, for he came into the family free of baggage: the first child, the first son, a replacement to no one.

While I was the gender my mother had wished for after her second son’s sudden passing, I was also an enigma to her. She must have wondered why her little girl was so inquisitive, so loud, so full of life, running around with boundless energy. Yet, because I was female, the bar became impossibly hard for me to reach. As the years unfolded, I realized that my role was to make my mother’s life easier: to become her shadow and be there for her as she aged the way she was for her mother. My grandmother, Nana Bea, and my mother were inseparable; even I couldn’t come between them as much as I tried. In many ways, I connected more with my grandmother than my mother and felt less judged and more accepted by Nana Bea. Still, their connection made us a threesome, and I also knew that my grandmother came first in my mother’s life, even before her husband and children. Yet, when my mother’s exasperation became fever-pitched, Nana took over and approached me with a calm and loving voice. I immediately responded to her unconditional love.

It wasn’t until after I wrote my memoir that I reflected on the totality of my replacement child legacy and the many qualities that come together to create the replacement child trauma. Many readers who have contacted me since reading my articles and book state that they did not even realize they were replacement children. However, like many of us, they feel ill at ease at various times in life and suffer from low self-esteem. In addition, they often feel rejected or not good enough, with overall anxiety.

One doesn’t have to replace another to possess such traits, of course. The family can experience a miscarriage before a healthy birth. Perhaps a child is born into a family with a sick sibling. He or she is not technically replacing anyone, but because so much of the focus is on the ill child, the healthy, younger one has a different role than she would have experienced if born into a home with a healthy sibling. The family can be blended with second marriages and step and half children. Depending on sibling rivalry, many children possess inherent personality traits similar to replacement children.

How children manage after replacing another child depends on the communication within the family. As was sadly typical of the time I was born (1950s), grief counseling and talk therapy were uncommon. My mother reminded me throughout my life that her ‘therapy’ in dealing with Jeffrey’s death was the doctor, paying a house visit one evening soon after, literally slapping her across her face to help her ‘snap out of it.’ When my stunned mother stopped crying, he said, “Move on. You have one child, so have another.” It was as simple and as destructive as that.

How can a mother or any parent be told to ‘move on’ when there is no acknowledgment of such a catastrophic loss? And to be told to have another baby as if the parents were substituting a vegetable dish? How can they carry on with any type of normalcy? And how can we expect the child to grow up with unconditional love when a bereaved parent is still mourning such a loss?

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Current research addresses the importance of communication regarding bereavement as well as the support for children who are in this role as replacement children. I am grateful that I wrote my truth, and my introspective nature guided me to therapy, where I examined my low self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem. Only in acknowledgment of these issues could I begin to rebuild my life into the healthy, joyous, and productive one I lead today.