“I Want to Bury It, Will You Join Me?”: The Use of Ritual in Prenatal Loss among Women in Catalonia, Spain in the Early 21st Century

Abstract

Prenatal loss, such as miscarriage and stillbirth, may be understood as the confluence of birth and death. The most significant of life’s transitions, these events are rarely if ever expected to coincide. Although human cultures have long recognized death through ritual, it has not typically been used in cases of pregnancy loss. Interest in prenatal losses in the fields of medicine and the social sciences, as well as among the general public, has grown significantly in recent years in many countries, including Spain, as evidenced by increasing numbers of clinical protocols, academic books and articles, public events and popular media coverage. Even with this growing attention, there are still no officially sanctioned or generally accepted ways of using ritual to respond to prenatal losses in Spain. However, despite a lack of public recognition or acceptance of the use of ritual, we found that women in the autonomous community of Catalonia, in Spain, are employing ritual in various fashions, both with and without the support and acceptance of their family, friends or community, to process their losses and integrate them into their lives.

Initial Impact of Perinatal Loss on Mothers and Their Partners

“…In our opinion, we need to better understand the psychological evolution of couples in cases of perinatal loss without falling into preconceived ideas about the influence of gender in different samples, cultures and settings. In fact, grief reactions are influenced by the multilevel systems in which individuals are embedded [45][46][47][48][49][50]. For example, traditional Mediterranean (as Catalonian) "culturally sanctioned" models of grief in men are different to the mothers "culturally sanctioned" models of grief.…”

Birth and Death: Studying Ritual, Embodied Practices and Spirituality at the Start and End of Life

“…Furthermore, many papers show that ritualistic practices happen before, during, and/or after birth and death and do not necessarily occur during the "main" rite of passage and do not always follow a linear transition. The studies on perinatal loss from McIntyre et al (2022), Norwood andBoulton (2021), andVaerland et al (2021), as well as Manfredi's (2022) work, on tattoos surrounding death and birth evidence that many people continue to ritualize the (re)integration of the deceased in their everyday lives not only after death has occurred but also long after human remains have reached their final destination (cf. Hertz [1907Hertz [ ] 1960.…”