Pragmatic marriage - matchmaking or introductions - and no contraception. Children dead from diseases now conquered through vaccinations and antibiotics - Fragile beings. Or because their mother was malnourished during her pregnancy. Or had too many children close together to actually recover between births. Or they wore born without a father to support the family. Or their mother had no milk.
Today we talk Grieving. We say it takes time to heal. We have psychotherapy. Then?
They had religion -informed world views. Children born as replacements (but not reincarnated) for previously born children who died. It seems to me that our ancestors had a whole lot to grieve as intimate family members, wives and husbands, parents, siblings, as well as friends and people they surrounded themselves died. Reminding them that they too would and that life had many risks.
They often remarried - pragmatically and quickly- as they might have the first time around in youth - and there were blended families due to death rather than divorce (which we think is another form of death.) A woman without a husband needed another one quickly.
Were they so different than us? Did they always have to carry on and get to it?
Villagers in Europe were often quite genetically related.
Children on farms worked young.
Girls were left uneducated more than boys. Even well-to-do families thought education - reading and writing - though educating a girl was handicapping her, making her a less desirable and dependent wife.
This was socially acceptable.
I think of the brides of pre-contraception and modern medicine days as especially brave. They all knew that pregnancy and childbirth could kill them.
As I try to understand my ancestors, I'm glad for the choices that modern medicine has given us.
And that be it them or me, life is short.
C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy
