[Hardy-l] re: kittens

[carolyn mcgrath]

'My Mum would kill me! (Not literally, of course!)'
   
  Thank god for central heating!
   
   
  Hi Jackie
   
  No problem and I'm glad you haven't taken offence at me - and I hope my poor taste in humour doesn't get me into trouble again! 
   
  I know you, like me, were a teacher for many years and so have seen how people strive, or not, to overcome the difficulties facing them. I am probably oversensitive to the possibilty that people reading your words would consider that because something was more common among a certain class of people, they mechanistically felt less about it. As regards comments made by other contributers, traditions of name-giving and so on or public expression of grief, these do of course change and have different meanings for different communities and over time but that does not mean the stillbirth or infant death was not remembered or mourned by those who suffered it. If you can't afford to feed yourself and suffer a stillbirth as a consequence and it is expected that no burial will be provided for that stillborn, the back of the fire is as good a place as any. A wanted child will be grieved whatever other unfortunate circumstances surround it. The remarkable thing, considering the high
 rate of infant mortality and death in childbirth was that the population exploded at that time - a pattern that relentlessly repeats in LEDC today. Hooray for progress!
   
  best wishes
   
   


Carolyn McGrath
       
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