Hi all, delighted to be taking part in this symposium, would love to hear some comments or any questions, Paul.

Hi Amy, thanks so much for your comment, you raise some interesting questions, I'll try my best to answer. I think that any public effort to support other parents or raise awareness of perinatal grief that uses an object or image associated with a parent’s own child acts to do a number of things. Symbolically, it would seem to act to establish a social presence for the child beyond the home and therefore could be seen as a form of social validation or public recognition of the loss, but it could also be considered as parents fulfilling their social role/identity as parents in relation to their child, feelings of pride, public display etc., that are important in our society. I haven't studied digital objects/images in facebook, but some other researchers have, and I think that they are probably far from being outliers. They seem to fulfill similar functions as other objects/materialities in relation to establishing a social presence for the the dead child, except that the possibilities of reaching a wider audience and connecting with people who can empathise is somewhat greater than in the more micro contexts that I study. I think objects are important because they provide a resource or medium through which parents can converse, build stories and share their grief, thereby not only sustaining their own identities and that of their child, but also trying to understand what has happened and make some sense of it socially and culturally. In doing so I believe that this helps them to cope.

Paul.

Hi, Paul,

So true about some of the objects I've held on to being surprisingly mundane, yet cherished, since I relate them to my stillborn daughter. Thank you for the excellent, thought-provoking presentation!