I know a few people today who lost a child at a young age. Most of them took years to recover and they were never really the same. As I understand it, back then it was expected that you would lose at least one child if not several. Did people then avoid getting attached to babies?
This is a question debated by historians in the last 50 years. It was a French historian Philippe Aries who first studied the history of childhood in depth. His main conclusion is that the concept of childhood was not known until the late 17th century. He claimed that earlier children were seen as miniature adults and were handled as such. In his book, he shows examples how parent-children relationship was distant in many ways, e.g. it was common that children were sent away to live with an other family as squires, apprentices or servants. That is why family connections were less important than peer connections. Aries' account is full of examples and very interesting but it is widely criticized. Since the 1960s historians have found several data to refute his thesis and there are indeed several sources which show that in the Middle Ages, parents cared about their children just as much as they do nowadays. Nevertheless, studies of traditional societies showed that childhood was interpreted differently in pre-modern era. Just think about child labour or child marriage. On the topic of death and grief, there are studies too, from which I'd mention Arthur E. Imhof's Lost Worlds: How Our European Ancestors Coped with Everyday Life and Why Life Is So Hard Today. It is based mainly on early modern German documents but in a way, I think he answers your question. He points out several factors why our ancestors coped better with death, and most of them can also be found in psychological studies. First of all, before the 20th century, death was more part of our life. From early childhood, everybody lost someone, watched them die and took part in the proceedings after death. Imhof has a very descriptive term "the black wall of death rate". There is a graph in his book showing death rates by age in pre-modern and modern societies. Earlier when child death was very frequent, the black wall of the graph was behind those who survived. Nowadays when fortunately most children survive and we live longer, the black wall of the diagram is in front of us which increases the stress. In addition, Imhof demonstrates other factors as well - he points out that faith, grief rites and customs, traditional family links helped those who lost children and in general, decreased the fear of dying. He also thinks that in many ways, earlier societies were less individualist and therefore survival of the family was more highly valued than survival of the individual. Finally, I think while most people coped with the death of their children, losing a child has never been easy, accounts of grief stricken mothers and fathers, mummified child corpses, paintings of dead children can attest to it.
I read a book called Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages that tackles just this topic actually (Here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Family-Middle-Ages-Frances/dp/0060914688)
Basically, the idea that people didn't care about their kids as much as a defense mechanism for when the kids eventually died has been put forth before by historians (Mainly Philippe Ariès). This idea has kind of fallen out of favor, instead with the leading theory being that pragmatism looks like indifference to modern eyes.
People bought and made their children toys, had special clothes made for their kids, and I've personally read a text or two from Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany about people losing someone they love and then becoming rather unstable. One minor noble in particular was never the same after losing his wife and child.
If you're willing to let me stretch the time period a bit, in 1572 after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre some of the propaganda written was about how terrible Catholics were for killing babies.
Sources: http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Family-Middle-Ages-Frances/dp/0060914688
http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/medieval_child.htm
http://www.the-orb.net/non_spec/missteps/ch6.html
Edit: Sorry, hope that's readable. I'm in a bit of a rush
In the medieval, middle English poem "How the Goode Wife Taught Hyr Doughter" (the earliest manuscript being from the 14th century but I've read was widely circulated) contains in some manuscripts lines which address this. The whole poem is a didactic "manual" for how a woman should act, specifically towards her husband, but one version contains lines that say (giving my own very, very poor translation) "and if it happens that friends fall away on every side and God from you your child takes do not take a grievance on God for it will undo thyself" and basically that this is a way many "wyll undo" themselves.
It's not most definitive line, but it gives credence to the idea that losing a child is something that could cause people to take a grievance against God, so there is some implied attachment there. In other words, if it was normal to not feel attached to children, why would you need to warn women about not taking it too hard? It was also not in every manuscript, so it may have been something of a "touchy subject", and the book I have with this passage gives other "child raising lines" that appear in some manuscripts but not others.
Source: "The Trials and Joys of Marriage" edited by Eve Salisbury (a TEAMS Middle English Text Series that can be found online if you want the original source.)
I would like some expansion on your question: how do you 'understand' this idea? Can you help me with some information as to how you have this idea?
Were attitudes like this common across the population? Or would, for example, rich and poor people have different reactions?