The Most Helpless Members of Our Society

With Dana Reeve's death last week, we mourned the passing of another mother taken too soon. The rash of obituaries that followed her death emphasized her emotional strength, her indomitable spirit, and her courage in the face of adversity. But there was a line in each one that stopped my heart every time I read it, and, I suspect, did the same for millions of other Americans.

Survivors include the Reeves' 13-year-old son, Will.

On March 6, Will Reeve, the son of Christopher and Dana, became one of more than 29,000 "double orphans" in the U.S. -- children under the age of eighteen who have lost both parents to death. He is one of the fortunate ones, if we can use that word without sounding facetious. His mother had the time and the inner fortitude to make arrangements for his care before she died. He will live with friends in Bedford Hills, near the Westchester suburb where he's grown up, and -- unlike so many other children who lose both parents -- will be able to stay in the same school, with the same friends. Presumably, he won't have to worry about finances. But do not be fooled. This is a boy who lost a father, a maternal grandmother, and a mother in less than two years' time. He's learned more about mortality by age thirteen than most people three times his age, and these aren't the kind of lessons any child should have to learn.

We know what happens to children who lose both parents, even to those with money and celebrity. Multiple losses within short periods seriously stress a child's coping skills. The enormity of such trauma is overwhelming to them. Some of these kids get angry. Most of them get sad. All of them feel deep loneliness. And many become afraid, sometimes cripplingly so, of losing someone else they love. So some of them stop loving. They shut down emotionally, to protect themselves from future pain.

One of my friends, who lost her entire nuclear family -- two parents and a sister -- between the ages of 14 and 21, describes those years as her "own personal Hiroshima." It took her well into adulthood before she could trust another person enough to love him, so afraid was she of being left again. As Israeli psychologist Tamar Granot, the author of Without You, reminds us, for the double orphan "the sense of calamity and loss is absolute. The child's entire world is instantaneously shattered, and he feels he is left alone in the world. Suddenly, he goes from being an ordinary child with parents and a family to one who has nothing." If he doesn't get psychological support at the time of loss, and sometimes even if he does, his self-esteem, self-worth, and sense of safety in the world suffer. Without his nuclear family, he will feel that he never quite belongs anywhere ever again.

And death is just one form of parental loss that a child can experience. There are a dozen other ways to lose a parent. Divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, and long-term mental or physical illness drive deep wedges into a family, often permanently.

Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota, when signing a bill that criminalized abortion in his state last Monday, justified the act with a statement claiming, "the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and the most helpless in their society." It's a noble sentiment, though misguided. The most vulnerable and helpless members of our society are not those who are not yet born, but those who are already here, the ones who either have no parents to protect them or have parents who don't protect them, the ones who are lonely, abused, neglected, suicidal, abandoned, and ignored. The ones who cry themselves to sleep alone at night with only a thumb for comfort; whose sole possession is a ratty stuffed bunny clutched tight from one foster home to the next; the ones who attend school with fresh bruises and the daily hope of a free hot meal.

These living children -- the neglected, the orphans, the abused -- they are the most helpless members of our society. Look around you. Really look. You'll see them. They're in our schools, our hospitals, our neighborhoods, and our newspapers. We might well ask what it says about a civilization that doesn't commit to saving every one of them first.

Hope Edelman is the author of Motherless Daughters and the forthcoming Motherless Mothers.