Contemporary parents seem obsessed over absorbing parenting books and youtube videos. There is a general cultural assumption that being a good parent is a lot of hard, dedicated work and requires the right know-how. It seems instinct is not enough. Did pre-modern peoples view it this way, or would they be surprised by our modern concern?
The seminal work on the history of childhood in the west, Philippe Ariès' "Centuries of Childhood," claimed that there was no notion of childhood before the modern period and that children were viewed as "little adults" who didn't matter. He argued that since infant mortality rates were so high parents simply would not have grown attached to their children since there was such a high risk of losing them before they reached adulthood.
Since that book came out in the 1960s, many historians have shown that people did care about their children prior to modernity, that they spent a great deal of time and care in raising them, and mourned their passing when they did fall prey to childhood disease. For example, Barbara Hanawalt ("Growing Up in Medieval London" and "The Ties That Bound") has shown that medieval people cared very deeply for their children.
One example of a group of people who wrote a lot about childrearing is the "Puritans," both in England and in New England. They were particularly concerned with godly behavior, but they generally tried to offer gentle correction rather than harsh punishment (see Philip Greven, "The Protestant Temperament").