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There’s also the incredibly high child mortality rate. Even in 1900, nearly one in four American children died before the age of 5. Imagine nearly everyone havi
by wat10000 1y ago
There’s also the incredibly high child mortality rate. Even in 1900, nearly one in four American children died before the age of 5. Imagine nearly everyone having a sibling or three who died young. Imagine nearly every parent having dead kids. I suspect the risk that the mailman would murder your child would pale by comparison.
- eichin 1y agoPlus the varied taboos about even talking about it; my mom had stories of having had a brother (in the early 1940's) and then just... not having one, "and noone talked about it". (Some of that is the vagaries of childhood memory, but there was just a lot of widely suppressed trauma in that generation too.)