On the one hand, child death was far more common back then, even among the well to do who could afford food and doctors. (Of MT's 16 children, 10 made it into adulthood, which was a good percentage for the era. Isabella had had two stillbirths inbetween this girl and her final pregnancy, during which she contracted smallpox, had a final miscarriage as a result and then lingered on a few more days to die of smallpox instead of miscarriage, poor woman.) Plus you can speculate that the habit of handing over one's offspring for other people to raise until they got older prevented parent-child bonding. But then you read something like this and it's clear Joseph had bonded with his daughter, and the grief speaks to us across all the centuries.
Re: Addendum on Joseph and Isabella's daughter
On the one hand, child death was far more common back then, even among the well to do who could afford food and doctors. (Of MT's 16 children, 10 made it into adulthood, which was a good percentage for the era. Isabella had had two stillbirths inbetween this girl and her final pregnancy, during which she contracted smallpox, had a final miscarriage as a result and then lingered on a few more days to die of smallpox instead of miscarriage, poor woman.) Plus you can speculate that the habit of handing over one's offspring for other people to raise until they got older prevented parent-child bonding. But then you read something like this and it's clear Joseph had bonded with his daughter, and the grief speaks to us across all the centuries.