‘You can name her’: Ritualised grieving by an Australian woman for her stillborn twin

Abstract

The stillbirth of an Australian infant in the mid-20th Century was an event often left unacknowledged. Mothers of stillborn babies were often told to ‘forget about it and have another baby.’ Siblings of these babies were often not encouraged to discuss them, and were even left unaware of their birth and death. This paper explores this phenomenon in an Australian case study. When Nancy was born in 1937, her twin sister was stillborn. As was customary at that time, the deceased baby was buried unnamed in an unmarked plot without ceremony. Little was said of her thereafter. Seventy-three years later, Nancy finally undertook a number of activities with ritualised features that acknowledged, named, mourned and honoured her sister.

Keywords:

• grief rituals
• stillbirth
• sociology
• disenfranchised grief
• memory keepers
• mourning