Nowadays it's widely held that there's no worse loss a person can endure than the death of a child, but was that true in eras when the rate of child mortality was much higher? Were parents just in a constant state of mourning, or was the death of a child considered to be less of a blow because it was such a common occurrence? Did it affect how parents attached to their children?
Hi, there's room for more contributions here, especially in the form of an overview, but you can get started on several examples from other threads
Did Ancient/Medieval parents love their children? - /u/Celebreth gives an Ancient Roman example, /u/federvieh1349 an example from Iceland, /u/roadtriptopasadena from Nahua
Today we tend to regard losing a child as one of the worst personal tragedies imaginable, whereas we tend to regard losing an elderly parent/grandparent as a sad but inevitable thing. Would somebody in Europe/America 300 years ago regard the two differently in terms of their relative awfulness? - /u/Flocculencio on Ben Johnson (17c England)
How did people in Medieval Europe react to child mortality? - /u/TheApiary on Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (12c Germany)
In the western world, how has the concept of grief altered in relation to fluctuating child mortality rates since Victorian times? - /u/plaguefish on Victorian England