An Introduction

Abstract

When a child, of whatever age, loses a loved one, childhood comes abruptly to an end. This is the message of the first lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “Childhood Is the KingdomWhere Nobody Dies” (1943). The ensuing stanzas reveal that children may experience the death of a distant relative or pet without suffering traumatic loss, but the death of someone who matters deeply to the child will be shattering. The poem’s title, repeated as a refrain, conveys anothermore obliquemessage as well, namely that there is no place for death in the innocent world of childhood. In his classic essay,Western Attitudes Toward Death: From theMiddle Ages to the Present (1974), written 30 years after Millay’s poem, Phillip Ariès saw this sentiment as part of the “modern interdiction of death.” He remarked, “Think of how carefully people today keep children away from anything to do