[BearGoesChirp]

>When has this ever not been true?

In the past before child abuse became seen as a big deal. Granted, if you hurt the child of some wealthy/powerful individual it was considered bad, but children of the poor, and especially children of single mothers were offered no where near the status they are given today.

Just look at societies where infanticide was common place to see that harming a defenseless child wasn't considered that bad an action (especially in cases where the child was showing signs of having developmental issues, I've read about there even being mythology that developmentally delayed children were treated as if the real child had been replaced by some demonic like figure who was being left to die/killed).

Or consider societies where children were effectively property of their parents (namely their father) and he could do as he liked to them?

Look at cultures where children were forced into marriages, something that would not be accepted today. Yes, people vastly overestimate how often such marriages happened (especially when at least one was young), but it was still far more tolerated when it did compared to today. Even in the last few years we have a few countries who still have laws on the book that reduced/removed punishment for a rapist if they married the victim. This historically applied even when the victim was a child (the Bible even has two passages that require such a punishment, one for when the child hasn't hit puberty (where the father can void the marriage) and one where the child has (where the father cannot void the marriage).

Or just look at a society that sacrificed children.

[smitherfield]

But those are examples of acts which we consider immoral and criminal today, but were acceptable and legal (or even moral and mandatory) in the past. People didn't think it was okay to commit crimes targeting child victims, they just didn't think of those things as crimes at all (which, at the time, they weren't).

That's a separate issue from what you were (or seemed to be) saying in the post I responded to, that in the past criminal gang members would be considered more sympathetic victims than children.

I don't believe there has ever been a society anywhere or at any time where violent crime between rival criminal gangs (of adult males) was considered morally worse than violent crime where adults harm children, in both cases assuming no third parties were harmed, and there were no differences in social rank, blood or marriage relations, blood feuds, religious reasons etc. which that society and its laws considered wholly or partially mitigating factors.

[naasking]

> People didn't think it was okay to commit crimes targeting child victims, they just didn't think of those things as crimes at all (which, at the time, they weren't).

See, this is the problem he's pointing out: if it wasn't considered ok, it would have been a crime. The point being that children as a whole weren't seen as a protected class the way they are now. At best, you might treat the child of a wealthy person well but only because of the consequences the father might inflict upon you, not because the child itself was worthy of that treatment.

[smitherfield]

People treated their children well enough for us to exist!

If we had a time machine and brought an ordinary American from the 1950's to the present, or asked ~40% of Americans nowadays, chances are they'd be horrified by what they'd see as the legalized murder of tens of millions of children (abortion). I'm not trying to bring politics into this (I'm strongly pro-choice), just pointing out that the definitions of "crime," "violent" and even "child" are highly subjective.

In any society I can think of which left a substantial enough written and/or archaeological record, it's clear that people were particularly affectionate towards and protective of children, which is the only way it could be since our brains and emotional/hormonal responses are literally wired that way.

That's in turn because those instincts are necessary for the continuation of the species. Objectively, it takes well over a decade of near-constant, stressful labor before a child provides net-positive economic utility, which, at historical life expectancies (early 40's), would usually be after one parent's and shortly before the other's death. So if we weren't hard-wired to want to care for and protect children, babies would be left to die of exposure and we'd die out after one generation.

[caf]

Low life expectancies in the past weren't because most people died in their 40s / 50s. They were heavily depressed by infant and child mortality - if you survived to adulthood, you had a reasonable chance of living to a ripe old age.

[smitherfield]

I'm already adjusting upwards for that; life expectancies didn't reach 50 (in the US) until the 1920's[1], and the posts I'm responding to are talking about the Medieval period or earlier, when life expectancy at birth would've been 30 or so. Some people did live into their 60's or longer but they were very much the exception, even among adults.

[1] https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-...

[naasking]

That's incorrect. The average age of adult death was much higher, around 60 [1], ie. if you lived to 5 years old, you could expect to live another 55 years.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/