Do You Feel Like a Replacement Child?

"Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, begins her memoir, The Other Girl, written in the form of a letter, with a description of a photograph of an infant in an embroidered dress. The description ends with these startling words: "When I was little, I believe-I must have been told-that the baby was me. It isn't me, it's you." (Italics mine.) 1"

"As the author continues to study the photograph, she names the physical differences between herself and her sister, further establishing her own identity separate from Ginette, the ghostly presence that haunted her childhood. Though Ernaux never uses the term "replacement child," The Other Girl depicts the author's personal experience of the phenomenon, and the burden of fulfilling the expectations of parents grieving the death of a sibling."

A photograph of an infant can become a focal point for a surviving sibling's sense of displacement and comparison to an idealized deceased sibling. Parents who conceive after a loss may unconsciously expect the new child to replace the lost one and to heal their sorrow. These expectations burden the replacement child with impossible demands that shape identity, lower self-esteem, and increase risk for mental-health problems. Hyper-idealization of the dead sibling produces persistent feelings of inadequacy in the living child. Conscious mourning by parents can prevent the imposition of a replacement role and reduce harm to the later-born child.

Read at Psychology Today