What did all-too-common child mortality mean to the people of history?
Well , it certainly removed the risk of rapid expansion of people and ideas which so obsesses the pessimistic Malthusian "experts" of today ! Still-births, starvation and plagues reduced the human existence to something very hard and very uncertain for MOST of it's short existence.
Some groups of people practiced filicide to control their population numbers so they did not have to compete with them for food , much as abortion is used today , but that is always rationalised away with other feeble excuses ! [ And the present level of mental illnesses and loneliness will only be matched in the future by the regret for all those lost people and their lost potential and their absence ! ]............................ON THE OTHER HAND my generation [ During and post WW11 ] were so loved and so wanted that we were effectively all "spoilt rotten" by our doting parents . We had very little by way of physical possessions [ because the war had consumed so much material ...e.g. food , clothing , shoes , toys , machinery ] but we sure got plenty of attention......most of it love....but a fair bit of it 'corrective' discipline too ! Times were hard and people were harder and tougher !
In hindsight , we had the best Grandparents EVER , the best parents EVER and we lived in the best times EVER because of the solid , cohesive society and the values and the optimistic spirit of that post-war era. ......................Nostalgia ? Of course ! Why not !
The improvements in society regarding children have been very little since my childhood
and in many ways some of the changes in society today have been quite detrimental !
Children have so much materially that their lives are clogged with "stuff" rather than friends , as we had , even "the girls" were required to make up the numbers of sporting teams , and later on , to make the sandwiches and do the washing up afterwards ! Social activity involved physical effort ,
physical contact and physical relationships which were REAL and enduring .
I think that I am fortunate to have lived in those times , and child mortality only occurred to me when my own Mother has a 'still-birth' ....................and cried inconsolably for many months !
What did all-too-common child mortality mean to the people of history?
Well , it certainly removed the risk of rapid expansion of people and ideas which so obsesses the pessimistic Malthusian "experts" of today ! Still-births, starvation and plagues reduced the human existence to something very hard and very uncertain for MOST of it's short existence.
Some groups of people practiced filicide to control their population numbers so they did not have to compete with them for food , much as abortion is used today , but that is always rationalised away with other feeble excuses ! [ And the present level of mental illnesses and loneliness will only be matched in the future by the regret for all those lost people and their lost potential and their absence ! ]............................ON THE OTHER HAND my generation [ During and post WW11 ] were so loved and so wanted that we were effectively all "spoilt rotten" by our doting parents . We had very little by way of physical possessions [ because the war had consumed so much material ...e.g. food , clothing , shoes , toys , machinery ] but we sure got plenty of attention......most of it love....but a fair bit of it 'corrective' discipline too ! Times were hard and people were harder and tougher !
In hindsight , we had the best Grandparents EVER , the best parents EVER and we lived in the best times EVER because of the solid , cohesive society and the values and the optimistic spirit of that post-war era. ......................Nostalgia ? Of course ! Why not !
The improvements in society regarding children have been very little since my childhood
and in many ways some of the changes in society today have been quite detrimental !
Children have so much materially that their lives are clogged with "stuff" rather than friends , as we had , even "the girls" were required to make up the numbers of sporting teams , and later on , to make the sandwiches and do the washing up afterwards ! Social activity involved physical effort ,
physical contact and physical relationships which were REAL and enduring .
I think that I am fortunate to have lived in those times , and child mortality only occurred to me when my own Mother has a 'still-birth' ....................and cried inconsolably for many months !