Question by Letty: What does replacement child mean in the giver?
Giver -> is a book.
I been reading it but I have no clue what replacement child means , thank you!

Best answer:

Answer by Doctor P
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 worse. Here’s a dry summary from a learned journal: “When bereaved parents give birth to a child or children subsequent to a perinatal death, their constructions of the family necessarily change. The subsequent child is thought to be at risk of psychopathology (the replacement child syndrome) if parents have not sufficiently grieved their losses.” “At risk of psychopathology” is a hesitant, euphemistic formulation.

The term “replacement child” has also been defined more broadly: it may, for example, refer to any child in a family that has lost one or more of its offspring (rather than solely to one conceived as a direct consequence of a death). In an even larger sense of the term, there are all kinds of ‘symbolic’ replacements: one psychologist has gone so far as to suggest that any Jewish child born after the European holocaust should be so considered. This idea seems extreme.

http://www.drmetablog.com/2006/01/the_replacement.html

http://www.deathreference.com/Py-Se/Replacement-Children.html

What do you think? Answer below!

Loss of a friend Acceptance – Losing a friend to death… Loss and grief; acceptance of things we can’t change. Your Health And Tech Friend publisher Nancy Koncilja Gurish shares her expe…