How families dealt with the loss of a child.

Part of genealogy is being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes, because sometimes you have to think like they would think when you hit one of those "Why did they do that," brick walls.

And some of the time, that revolves around the "discovery" of a child who was not part of "the family" as "the family" was presented to you.   This can either be because of issues around conception, the death of a child or the loss of a child through adoption.

In order to be a good detective, you need to take off the hat that wear that drives your moral decisions and outlook on life.  What I mean is that if you approach a 1900's problem with your 2017 ideas about what people should do and shouldn't, you could be keeping yourself from understanding what happened and judging others on their actions.  That isn't our role.  Our role is to find out what happened.

Taking that 2017 hat off also requires that you have to know the social history of the time you are searching, the cultural climate of the of the place you are searching, the economic conditions and the general wisdom of that time. You also need to research, understand and make sense of the circumstances that the family line you are researching was in at the time of the event, or person in question.

Are you asking yourself the right questions, like:

• Why would they have needed to do this, or avoid discussing it?
• What were their income pressures? 
• What kind of living conditions? 
• What were the priorities of survival?  
• How could their faith impact how they subsequently dealt with the loss because of death, because of illness or because of an adoption?
• Where would the records be, and if they are not there now, where would they be today?

In a discussion forum online someone had posted a death certificate of an infant that they were trying to get information on.  She was doing a search for a friend, and said friend's family didn't think that said infant was related, even though the parental information match her friends line. 

And why?

Because the family never said anything about the infant.  So it couldn't be true. 

And what do we need to do to make sense of this?  Take off the hat of modern sensibilities. 

1) Why would the family have never spoken about this child?  

In our common era, now, the loss of a child is one in which grieving is discussed, supported and if need be can dealt with through therapy.  In the era in which the child was born (WWI era) child mortality rates were higher.  The loss of babies and infants was a more common occurrence.  And the outpouring of personal problems was looked down upon. 

2) Couldn't the mother get help?

If it was a working class family, the answer is unlikely from outside the family.  Grieving was something to be done when there was time to do it.  The house had to be kept.  The other children had to be attended to.  There wasn't the transportation or the income to pay for lots of doctor visits.  And psychotherapy was still an abstraction.  If you husband was working 12 hour shifts, six days a week in a steel mill, then things were hard for everyone. 

3) What were the mother's outlets for comfort?

Other neighbors, other family members.  The Church and faith.  A visit to the child's grave, if known.

4) If known?

Many cultures called for the immediate burial of babies and infants.  The idea was to deal with it quickly because life goes on - it has to.  

I have a cousin named Avrum Freeman who is buried in one of the Sons of Abraham Beth Jacob Cemeteries in Albany, New York. There are several cemeteries because the temple body today is an amalgamation of several congregations and have no idea which cemetery has his remains.  Avrum died sometime during the night when the hospital swaddling became loose and blocked his airway.  Jewish tradition was to bury him before sundown.  It's the way it is done.  And since my Aunt became emotional if you mentioned him, and my uncle clammed up - because this is how they dealt with their grief - it was never mentioned.   We didn't even know he had a first name until 2002 when we found a copy of the death certificate.   Again, it wasn't because they didn't love or want him, if anything, the opposite was true. But it took everything for them to function without him being there.  You cannot fully comprehend it unless you walk in their shoes in the time that it happened. 

5) Why was a mother sent to a State Hospital after the birth?

This is going to be the topic for the next blog posting on Friday.  It's an important one that could answer a something that has been kept quite in the family for a very long time, and the reason will shock you.  

See you Friday.