Further Hierarchies of Loss: Tracking Relationality in Pregnancy Loss Experiences

Abstract

The article extends Robson and Walter’s concept of hierarchies of loss by describing further factors which afford differential social legitimacy to death-related losses. Drawing on our separate research with women in England who have experienced pre-viability pregnancy loss through different types of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly, we note that closeness of relationship to the object of loss does hierarchise pregnancy loss. However, other relational elements are also implicated, including ontological positions on what it was which was lost, in relation to other individually and socially experienced losses. Hierarchies are both imposed and agentially used by those who are implicated. This wider analysis extends the concept of hierarchies of loss so it can include experiences which do and do not involve grief and bereavement, and experiences of social recognition alongside those where loss is disenfranchised, marginalised, or ungrievable.

Women’s experiences of the consenting process for pregnancy remains disposal following early miscarriage

“…In the case of early pregnancy, some women place their loss low on a hierarchical scale, note the absence of certain stages of developing personhood, such as hearing a heartbeat or witnessing movement during a scan. 14 Women noted appropriateness of the disposal discussion had their pregnancies been further along and fetuses more developed:…”

Invisible Labours

“…The socially minimised disappearance of babies such as Chloe's daughter, and the consequent minimisation of the event of bereavement, led some women to minimise their own experience and place it as insignificant in a discursive hierarchy of loss. This hierarchy placed pre-24-week loss alongside earlier miscarriage as less distressing than stillbirth or neonatal death (Middlemiss and Kilshaw 2023). Eva wondered, 'am I making a fuss?'…”