What is Replacement child?
A '''replacement child''' is a child [[Fertilization|conceived]] by [[parent]]s to replace an older dead [[sibling]]. He or she is usually of the same [[sex]] as the [[child]] they replaced. Often, they are given the same [[name]]. The replacement child provides [[consolation]] to the parents for the loss of the earlier child.<ref name=Unwert153>Matthew von Unwert, ''Freud's Requiem: Mourning, Memory, and the Invisible History of a Summer Walk'' (London: Continuum, 2006), p. 153</ref> It is also frequently believed they are a [[reincarnation]] of the lost child.<ref name=Unwert153/> As a result a replacement child represents the hopes and dreams parents had for the dead child.<ref name=Unwert153/> == History == The replacement child or replacement child [[syndrome]] became [[popularity|popular]] in periods of high [[infant mortality]].<ref name=Unwert153/> But it continues in modern times in some places. In some religions and cultures, it was [[Superstition|bad luck]] to mention a dead child's name.<ref name=Kotilainen11>Sofia Kotilainen, 'An inherited name as the foundation of a person's identity: How the memory of a dead person lived on in the names of his or her descendants', ''Thanatos'', Vol 1, No. 1 (2012), p. 11</ref> Even among European royal families, a dead child was often referred to by his or her title and not their name. Among the replacement children of [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]] [[Wikt:survive|survivors]] the names of the dead were often not spoken of.<ref>Leon Anisfeld; Arnold D. Richards, 'The Replacement Child: Variations on a Theme in History and Psychoanalysis', ''Psychoanalytic Study of the Child'', Vol. 55 (2000), pp. 301–318</ref> The name was memorialized in the replacement child (because they were alive, the name could be used).<ref name=Kotilainen11/> In [[early modern Europe]], the name given a child was supposed to make them like the person they were named for.<ref name=Muir24.25>Edward Muir, ''Ritual in Early Modern Europe'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 24–