alt Hacker NewsLook at this astonishing graph:
https://kottke.org/25/12/an-astonishing-graph
For most of human history, around 50% of children used to die before they reached the end of puberty. In 2020, that number is 4.3%. It’s 0.3% in countries like Japan & Norway.
Yeah, I thought of this first as well. There is nothing that hammers home the point that the past was a horrible place better than childhood mortality statistics. I’m surprised the author of the article didn’t mention it, given all her focus on families - I mean, good for her for realizing she didn’t understand what life in the past was really like, but she still seems a little focused on “it wasn’t cute” rather than the really big differences.
Related recent HN thread on the Bills of Mortality from early modern London: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46045061
The tldr of my post there is that life before the mass availability of antibiotics after WWII was pretty terrifying.