Is the amount of tragedy associated with death, or a particular kind of death, necessarily lesser if a culture exists in a time when such deaths are common place?
Did people in 18th century view child death as less tragic than we do because they knew they’d have to contend with it a lot more then we do, possible many times within a single family?
For what it's worth Barbara Tuchmann in her examination of the 14th C claimed that premodern parents were more inured to the deaths of children. From what I understand there are criticisms of that perspective. I can give a primary scource from the 17th C, though, in Ben Jonson's 1603 sonnet on the death of his son.
The implication seems to be that no matter how commonplace the death of a child might have been, it was still devastating:
On my First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
Jonson in the first quatrain depicts his child's life as a loan which has to be paid, underlining the commonplace nature of the death of a child. Nonetheless in the second quatrain he underlines the fact that he wishes he could 'lose all father' i.e. lose the sentiments of a father and see it in such dispassionate terms, rationally seeing death as an escape from the torments of the world and age. The final quatrain ends the sonnet with the heartbreaking image of his dead son as his best piece of poetry and a hope that whatever else he loves in life he won't like so much that losing it would cause such pain.