Category talk:Grieving Parents

Review
So my kidding on the square has come to fruition. Margaret Truman is dead. Shall we go ahead and split now? And while we are at it, should be consider a somewhat more accurate title? Stalin didn't seem to care much that his eldest son died, for example. TR (talk) 23:04, June 21, 2017 (UTC)

TR (talk) 17:19, June 23, 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't have any objections to making the split. I also agree that the name "Grieving Parents" is somewhat misleading, especially in cases where the parent killed the child but I can't think of an alternative name. ML4E (talk) 18:11, June 23, 2017 (UTC)


 * English needs to come up with a new word, or steal one from another language. I am given to understand that the Chinese have a word, shidu, that is slowly gaining some traction outside of China, but it applies specifically to parents who have lost their only child. Even if we wanted to participate in the great English language tradition of stealing from other languages, it would still be insufficient for our purposes.


 * If we (as in the Anglosphere, that is, not as in the three of us) do wind up stealing that one, I imagine we'd broaden the meaning a bit. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:40, June 26, 2017 (UTC)


 * Also, I'm surprised that the need to coin a term never came up when the Bible was being translated into English. The deaths of children (real or apparent) are major events on which at least a dozen well-known Bible stories turn. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:43, June 26, 2017 (UTC)


 * True. I still don't have any suggestions. ML4E (talk) 16:46, June 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * Infanticides should probably be in their own category. TR (talk) 18:37, June 23, 2017 (UTC)


 * I was thinking of the exception in the last sentence giving Josef Goebbels as an example. ML4E (talk) 16:46, June 24, 2017 (UTC)


 * Ok, well, we'll leave the name be for now, then. If we can justify Parents who Committed Infanticide, I'll create it.


 * Perversely, given Goebbels' motivation, he probably did "grieve" in his own twisted way. Asshole. TR (talk) 17:06, June 24, 2017 (UTC)

If we're willing to sacrifice brevity for precision, we could go with a descriptive category name, like "Parents of Deceased Children" or "Parents Who Outlived Their Children."


 * Autofilling does allow with for precision while removing the downside of length. TR (talk) 03:35, June 26, 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm okay with the trade-off. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:36, June 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * Seems okay with me too. Of the two, I prefer the first: "Parents of Deceased Children" since the second seems to imply they outlived all their children rather than only some. Would that cover miscarriages too? I seem to recall that FO mentions the Finches had the only child since Mrs. Finch had a series of miscarriages that could kill her if she became pregnant again. ML4E (talk) 16:13, June 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * Re: miscarriages--IME, that's a pretty subjective thing. I've known women who had miscarriages who were quite philosophical about it, and others who felt as if they had indeed lost their child and mourned. Factors would include at what time in the pregnancy the miscarriage took place and the perceived likelihood of whether there could be another successful pregnancy.


 * A good friend of mine miscarried last year. It would have been her first child, she'd been so excited. I gave her a condolence card. I had the thought at the time that holding funerals for miscarried babies would give people like her a real chance for meaningful closure, but it's just not done. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:05, June 29, 2017 (UTC)


 * I guess my answer would be to say "no", as most of the miscarriages HT has written about tend to be of the former camp than the latter. They don't perceive themselves as parents of deceased children, they had pregnancies that didn't "take".  TR (talk) 18:01, June 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * I think so too, because it never seems to have much impact on HT's characters. (Of course, characters in premodern settings, like Gerin's horrible first wife, are, as TR puts it, "philosophical" about the children they lose after birth, too.) For historical figures it may be a different story, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. A "Women Who Miscarried" category could be created at need, if nothing else. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:05, June 29, 2017 (UTC)