I have always had that impression that during the middle ages or even before, women were having many children and it was a common occurrence that some of them would die fairly quickly.
Nowadays it seems that the loss of a child is the most terrible tragedy someone can live through, a tragedy from which parents don t recover.
Were people in the past mentally more resilient to the loss of a child if that was such a common occurrence, and if not, how were grieving these losses?
More can always be said, but this older answer from /u/amandycat might be of interest to you.
In addition to /u/amandycat fantastic answer, I would also recommend the follow previously answered questions:
Here's the content of a comment from u/Searocksandtrees to a similar question three years ago. Original comment link.
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
Thank you all for these very precise answer!