Replacement Children
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Friends, relatives, and stray internet pilgrims know that Dr. Metablog, aka Vivian de St. Vrain, etc. is a "replacement child" and has written about it in the blogpost Susan P. and also in brief remarks on Louis Aggasiz, Edward Gibbon, Thornton Wilder, and a guy from the old neighborhood. Now, I'm happy to say, there's…
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This entry is written at the specific instruction of my daughter, who says, "your grandchildren will want to know about your birth. It's their history too." The following paragraphs are for them and for their descendants. My older sister, Susan, died of pneumonia at the age of nine months on March 15, 1938. If she…
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A "replacement child," narrowly defined, is a person who is intentionally conceived because an older sibling has recently died. Such substitutes must endure the lifetime burden of competing with a lost and often idealized child. Because it is almost impossible for such persons to please their parents, they easily become confused and frustrated, and in worst-case scenarios, pathological. One…
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By strict definition, a replacement child is one who is conceived because an older sibling has died. According to the theory, such a child is at psychological risk, especially if the dead child has not been adequately mourned. Because he was an oldest son, Edward Gibbon, the greatest of all modern historians and the most…
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I finally got around to watching In America, a film which won all sorts of awards in 2002 and which I ordered from Netflix after it appeared on someone's best films of the decade list. It's a fine movie, especially if you enjoy piping your eye from dawn to dusk. Always susceptible, I cried a…
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Louis Agassiz was, Darwin aside, the nineteenth century's most acclaimed naturalist. He was the first to speculate about the ice ages and the first to suggest that mastodons and other giant quadrupeds had become extinct as a consequence of the deep freeze in Asia and America. Agassiz was much celebrated in his lifetime, and at…
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey, although published in 1927, was still widely read in the 1950s both by the general public and by students in classrooms all over America. It's a fine novel but it's unfortunate that Thornton Wilder's philosophical premise is so naive and lame. In 1714 a rope bridge over a gorge…
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I wish I had pleasant dreams but I only have nightmares. Here's one of them. Beginning with early adolescence and continuing to this day, I've had a recurring dream in which I've murdered someone–I don't know whom. The victim is always an unidentifiable male, and his death is always violent. Ordinarily, I beat him to…
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In Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son (1848), which I've just re-read, Dombey's treasured son Paul dies when his older sister, Florence, is about six years old. Dombey has never liked his daughter Florence (he seems to blame her for being a girl) and likes her less after he loses Paul. Dombey could transfer his affection…
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In the narrowest definition, a "replacement child" is a being who is intentionally conceived because an older sibling has recently died. Such substitutes must endure the lifetime burden of competing with a lost and often idealized child. Because it is almost impossible for them to please their parents, they easily become confused and frustrated, or…