[mothballed]

Everything about being a male parent was far less precarious, and being a female parent was less precarious after childbirth. There was literally basically no liability if the children died, and not only that, the people around you would likely understand and sympathize with you. You could just make a best effort and if you failed, chalk it up to bad luck and try again. And if you died of starvation, welp your responsibilities in life have ended. That's a lot more inviting to having children than the current status quo.

Society today still doesn't really do dick to help parents but not only that they've built unprecedented apparatus around jailing, ridiculing, condemning, and harassing parents for any perceived weaknesses in their strategy including failing to foresee their financial situation decades into the future.

[bluGill]

While child death was common, there is no reason to think it was somehow less devastating to the families it happened too.

[mothballed]

There is every reason to think legal consequences + misfortune of a child are more devastating than just misfortune of a child. For one, for instance people have had all their children removed when a single child has a fragile bone disease or similar poorly explained illness causing injury or death and CPS accuses the parents of abuse and causes the trauma of not just losing/injury of the child but also losing all your children and possibly being charged. There are cases of people adopting abused children and documenting the prior abuse at time of adoption, but then having their other kids removed when doctors find the signs of the prior documented abuse when the child dies despite the best efforts of the person adopting the child.

I don't know why on earth you would think the trauma of having the legal system + other people attacking you + possibly losing custody of your other kids wouldn't cause more devastation. The whole system is geared around causing additional devastation for families this happens to compared to in prior times.

Maybe the chance of having a child die or an unfixable injured is less than before, but the weight of consequences to consider are higher than before.

[cucumber3732842]

From child mortality to soldiers in combat there is a nearly infinite amount of research indicating that whatever bad things you want to look are less devastating when the the entire society around you says "aw shucks, that happens sometimes, maybe just pray better and try again" rather than "omg that sounds horrible you must be so traumatized, have you tried therapy"

[circlefavshape]

Have you been neglecting to pay your child support?

[jmye]

What a weird take. You make it sound like their dead children were no big deal, but by god, someone not paying for your children for you is a catastrophe.

> And if you died of starvation, welp your responsibilities in life have ended.

Yes, gosh, imagine people making a big deal out of starving to death. At least they didn't owe someone money.

[mothballed]

>ou make it sound like their dead children were no big deal, but by god, someone not paying for your children for you is a catastrophe.

No I'm pointing out American society's fake concern for the welfare of children. They don't punish parents to help children. In fact, it's almost totally crickets when it comes to helping the children. We even spend a gazillion dollars on guided missiles to bomb girls' schools in Iran with barely a fuck given about the children inside. The point is to assert smug moral superiority and to punish, jail, and harass parents not help the children. Society wants all the upside of asserting their opinion on parenting and stomping the boot down on parents but none of the responsibility that goes with the choice to assert your opinion on how children should be raised. Wanting kids raised a certain way while shunting all the responsibility on others at ~no cost to yourself except to punish those who fail to live up to your standards, it's the cheapest and most disingenuous kind of concern but frighteningly actually backed by the precious projection of the "rule of law" that arguably makes children even worse off while also acting as a signal towards inhibiting people to have children since they don't want to subject their every lifestyle choice to the whims of "think of the children" psychopaths that can start a CPS investigation ("we investigate every tip") at the drop of a hat.

> imagine people making a big deal out of starving to death. At least they didn't owe someone money.

I don't think I need to explain why people who have starved to death are able to make less of a "big deal" out of their lot than living people who owe money.