Lol, yes, I was telling my wife about the child mortality rate being the same across classes, and since I had previously told her about Louis XV's governess barricading herself in the room with the kid, she said the same thing you did! We joked blackly that if your kid was about to survive measles on their own, you could afford to have them bled to death to keep up with the peasants!
Nutrition for rich children was better overall than for peasants, but not as much as you might think.
- There were a lot of rich neglected children, because the underpaid and abused servants raising them didn't always have a whole lot of motivation to keep them alive. A *lot* of rich kids, not just FW's, reported growing up hungry.
- There were really poor medical beliefs. Like if a baby wasn't thriving, the doctor might take them off milk and feed them weird powders (like dried snake) ground up in water.
- Since rich women weren't breastfeeding their own kids, they had a wet nurse to do that. Sometimes she lived in the countryside, and it took a couple days to get the kid to her. During that time, people believed it was very important that the kid not imprint on anyone else, so instead of letting them breastfeed with whatever lactating woman was in the vicinity, they would feed the kid sugar water.
- Middle-class/rich kids more likely to stay inside, less likely to get vitamin D from the sun, more likely to have rickets. (This may be offset by the sheer amount of child labor that went into poorer kids getting plenty of sun.)
Etc.
However, given the striking height differences between adults (and presumably children) of different classes, child nutrition must have been much better *on average* in affluent families. Treatment for infectious diseases, not so much.
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Re: Various questions from Mildred
Date: 2021-02-26 02:40 pm (UTC)Nutrition for rich children was better overall than for peasants, but not as much as you might think.
- There were a lot of rich neglected children, because the underpaid and abused servants raising them didn't always have a whole lot of motivation to keep them alive. A *lot* of rich kids, not just FW's, reported growing up hungry.
- There were really poor medical beliefs. Like if a baby wasn't thriving, the doctor might take them off milk and feed them weird powders (like dried snake) ground up in water.
- Since rich women weren't breastfeeding their own kids, they had a wet nurse to do that. Sometimes she lived in the countryside, and it took a couple days to get the kid to her. During that time, people believed it was very important that the kid not imprint on anyone else, so instead of letting them breastfeed with whatever lactating woman was in the vicinity, they would feed the kid sugar water.
- Middle-class/rich kids more likely to stay inside, less likely to get vitamin D from the sun, more likely to have rickets. (This may be offset by the sheer amount of child labor that went into poorer kids getting plenty of sun.)
Etc.
However, given the striking height differences between adults (and presumably children) of different classes, child nutrition must have been much better *on average* in affluent families. Treatment for infectious diseases, not so much.