It’s strange how language shapes our understanding of the world, yet sometimes it reveals more than we intend. Take, for instance, the term orphan. A word that we all recognise. We know what it means—an orphan is a child who has lost their parents. Yet, until recently, I hadn’t stopped to consider the profound silence that surrounds the opposite situation: when parents lose a child. There’s no universal term for the parents left behind, their grief untitled, left to linger in the shadows of language.
Why is that? And does it matter?
The origin of 'orphan': A historical lens
The term orphan has roots that reach back into the ancient world. Derived from the Greek word orphanos, which means "bereft of parents," the word made its way into Latin and, eventually, Old French before arriving in English. Historically, the loss of a parent — especially in times when life expectancy was lower and child mortality rates were higher — was a significant and recognised social tragedy. Societies needed a word for these children who were vulnerable, at risk, and often without a direct caregiver. The term orphan served to name that specific grief, to provide a frame of reference for others to understand.
In earlier times, an orphan was also seen as a person deserving of care and support, and that cultural framework perhaps reinforced the need for a word that both identified and validated the trauma. While our modern world has certainly seen advances in child welfare, the word has kept its place in the lexicon, tied to the idea of a child without parental care.
The absence of a term for bereaved parents
But what about when parents lose a child? There is no singular word for the devastation that comes with the death of a child. The loss is described in many ways — "bereaved," "grieving," or simply "parents who have lost a child." But these are general terms, not specific ones. There’s no label that captures the full depth of the parental experience in the same way orphan does for a child.
In part, this may be because the cultural understanding of grief is often shaped by the way we view life and death. In many societies, there’s an expectation that parents should "go before" their children, the natural order being that parents live long enough to raise their offspring to adulthood. Losing a child — specially one who is young or hasn’t yet lived a full life — feels unnatural, almost like a distortion of life’s intended course. Parents are supposed to nurture, protect, and provide a future for their children. When this doesn’t happen, it’s a tragedy beyond words.
This absence of a term may reflect our discomfort with such a profound loss. In contrast to orphan, which denotes a vulnerable position in need of care and support, the grief of a parent who has lost a child is an entirely different, deeply personal experience. We might struggle to name it because it is the breaking of a fundamental expectation—a wound that, while universally understood in its severity, resists categorisation.
The value of creating a new label
Could there be value in coining a term for parents who lose a child? On one hand, the introduction of such a term could offer validation to those who grieve in silence, a recognition of the unspeakable pain they carry. Naming grief has power. It helps people process loss, providing a shared vocabulary for experiences that might otherwise feel isolating. It can be a form of recognition and solidarity for those who are navigating the uncharted waters of this kind of heartache.
On the other hand, we might ask if creating a new term would reduce the profound, multifaceted nature of such grief to something too simple, too clinical. The word orphan itself doesn’t encapsulate the entirety of what an orphan endures—its focus is on the absence of parents, not the emotional and psychological impacts of that absence. Similarly, a term for bereaved parents might carry the risk of oversimplifying what is a deeply complex, individual experience. Would such a word truly do justice to the unique nature of parental loss, or would it make the grief feel even more isolating by forcing it into a singular label?
A personal reflection
Perhaps, in the end, the absence of a specific term for bereaved parents is itself a reflection of the unique and indescribable nature of this loss. Parents who lose a child may not need a new label, because the pain they carry can’t be contained within the confines of a word. It’s the kind of grief that defies easy categorisation, a loss so overwhelming that it transcends labels altogether.
Yet, the question remains: why, in our language, do we have a word for one type of loss and not the other? Perhaps it’s time we started a conversation about this imbalance. Not because a new term would necessarily fix the pain, but because it might offer a bit more recognition, a bit more understanding, and a bit more space for those who are living with the unimaginable.
References and image source: "The Accident" on Netflix
The History of the Term 'Orphan'
Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Orphan. Retrieved from https://www.oed.com
Hockett, C. F. (1966). The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Human Speech Mechanism. McGraw-Hill.
Cultural Views on Grief and Death
Worden, J. W. (2009). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner (4th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Taylor & Francis.
The Emotional Impact of Losing a Child
Rosenblatt, P. C. (2000). Grief and Loss across the Lifespan: A Biographical Approach. Sage Publications.
Silverman, P. R. (2000). Never Too Young to Grieve: The Five Stages of Loss. Taylor & Francis.
Linguistic Gaps and the Power of Naming Grief
Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Duke University Press.
Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso.