Were Medieval Parents Attached To Their Children?

Infant and child mortality were high in the middle ages. Many children would never reach adulthood. Because of this, you may have heard the idea that parents didn't invest themselves emotionally into their children below a certain age, knowing that there was a good chance the child wouldn't survive. But is this true? Were medieval parents really uncaring toward the loss of their children? Follow me on Instagram:   / studium.historiae   Works cited and recommendations for further reading: -Ariès, Philipe. Centuries of Childhood: A social history of family life. Robert Baldick, trans. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). -Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: the abandonment of children in western Europe from late antiquity to the renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1988). -Classen, Albrecht, ed. Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the results of a paradigm shift in the history of mentality (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005). -Cochelin, Isabelle, Karen Elaine Smyth, eds. Medieval life cycles: continuity and change (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). -CUER MA. L'Enfant au Moyen âge: littérature et civilisation (Presses universitaires de Provence, 1980). -De Jong, Mayke. In Samuel's Image: child oblation in the early medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996). -Goldberg, P.J.P., Felicity Riddy, eds. Youth in the Middle Ages (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2004). -Koval, Matthew. Childhood in Medieval Poland (1050-1300): constructions and realities in a European context (Leiden: Brill, 2021). -Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Children (Yale University Press, 2001). -Preston-Matto, Lahney, Mary A. Valante, eds. Kids Those Days: children in medieval culture (Leiden: Brill, 2021). -Rosenblum, Morris. Luxorius: A Latin Poet among the Vandals (Columbia University Press, 1961). -Ryan, Patrick Joseph. Master-Servant Childhood: a history of the idea of childhood in Medieval English culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). -Scott, Eleanor. The Archaeology of Infancy and Infant Death (British Archaeological Reports, 1999). -Shuhar, Shulamith. Childhood in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1989). All images used in this video are either my own, in the public domain, under fair use, or under creative commons (whence they shall be credited appropriately) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Outro music: Laid Back Guitars by Kevin MacLeod, CC BY-SA 4.0 http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... #medievalhistory #medieval #middleages #history #educational #childhood #family #socialhistory #medievallife #historiography