I imagine that people were largely indifferent to the loss of a child in "ye olden times" because it was expected, and they hardened themselves to the probability. Childhood mortality was atrocious back in the day.
Also reproduction rates. From what I understand, in hunter-gatherer societies, children were breast-fed for a number of years, and, since women generally are infertile when nursing, children were spaced out. With agriculture infants came to be fed on porridge, goats milk, etc, and so the size of families increased greatly. And this made sense economically, since children can't hunt and are of limited use gathering, but even a very young one can pull weeds.