Gaashk
3d ago
I doubt your description of grief was accurate for most people at any point in history, including now. I know women who were widowed with young children, and in general they don't entirely break down. It's super sucky, yeah. But they work and care for the babies and sometimes move houses and all sorts of functional adult things. This is not on account of not loving their husband! People do all sorts of difficult things, they work in the bottom of mines until they die, too, and fight in the trenches.
In the same societies with high infant mortality, mothers had to nurse their babies basically full time, and also carry them everywhere they went. Helping with the reaping? Carry the baby. Going to bed? With the baby. People talk about babies not having an idea of themselves as separate from their mothers for some time, and the "fourth trimester." Losing an infant would be like a super sucky miscarriage or stillbirth, something modern women do still experience. I know someone who lost her baby at a couple of months old, and she's really upset about it, for sure. She talks about it and posts memorials and raises money for causes that are trying to help babies with similar problems. But, yeah, she did still have to care for her other children and go back to work in a reasonable amount of time.
One thing I think might be more important is that women bearing and losing multiple children is more symmetrical with men fighting in wars (and losing friends, it's not like soldiers at war have a reputation for unusually cold friendships) than with men working jobs, especially office jobs. A society where men fight and possibly die, and women bear and raise children, and possibly die, is tenable. One where men work office jobs and women also work office jobs, but can bear children if they choose, as their hobby, is not tenable at scale (gestures to modern world).
(But all people in previous societies were religious to some extent, which does probably improve purpose and resilience. The woman who lost her baby also talks about wanting to see her baby again in Heaven, which was a big concern, and why Catholics have infant baptism)
The situation sounds somewhat like the complaint that young teen girls who feel insecure about their appearance go on instagram to see what the norms are, where the algorithm, sensitive to stopping and viewing times, will feed them more and more unattainable images and anorexia content. Whereas it won't show it to their mothers (I have a lot of pretty landscape paintings and handmade historical costumes on Instagram). I can't remember a real person spouting the male collective guilt line, but then I don't linger on such a thing when I find it, so the egrigore doesn't bother feeding me a stream of it.
More options
Context Copy link