Thinking Medieval: Scarterra's child mortality is LESS bad than historical Earth's than preindustrial Earth

Comparative History

  Scarterra's child mortality is less bad that it was for most of human history on Earth though Scarterra has proprortional fewer children survive to adulthood than 21st Earth children.   I would ballpark that Scarterra's child mortality rate is roughly halfway between medieval Earth and modern Earth.   Why?   It is known that for much of Earth history, the average human life expectancy was about thirty but this doesn't mean everyone dropped dead on their thirty-first birthday. Due to the magic of math, if you have two people, one who dies at at one and one who dies at sixty-one, the average will be thirty-one. If a medieval boy or girl made it to fourteen, odds were pretty good that they would live long enough to see grey hairs. This certainly applies to Scarterra.   A major cause of child mortality (and adult mortality) for almost every era of Earth history was disease. Scarterra has slightly better sanitation than medieval Europeans enjoyed but more importantly, Scarterra is a relatively high magic a fantasy world and it has men and women who literally possess magical healing powers.  

Who gets the magical healing?

  Scarterra does not have enough magical healers to cover everyone in every place, and there are not enough healing potions and the like that there are giant stockpiles of these things, but there is some access to magic healers and there are small stockpiles of healing potions and the like. Scarterra also has supernaturally augmented forces that cause disease but magical healers are both more numerous and better organized.     Deciding who gets the magical healing is a hotly contested political issue but usually rich people and children get to move to the front of the line, and the children of rich people get lots of access to magic healing. Most Scarterrans have to make due with non-magical physicians most of the time. Healing Potions and Healing Powder is quite expensive, but many non-magical healers have some for emergencies only.  

Delivering Babies

  Most Scarterran midwives rely on non-magical remedies and methods to aid women in child birth but if a pregnancy happens to have unforeseen complications, it is useful for midwives to have some healing powder on hand, just in case. Women who are pregant will try to relocate near magical healers when they come close to term or magical healers will relocate themselves to be close to pregnant women near to term.   Even if they are not a midwife by trade, most magical healers in Scarterra will at least have least read a book on the subject.   In preindustrial earth, as many one-in-four women died in their child birthing years, but in Scarterra it's only than one-in-ten, and the baby is a lot more likely to survive too.   Healing ●●● can magically fix up most damage to the mother from a cicerian baby delivery, and Purification ●●● will ward off fever and other illnesses that young infants are prone to catching.   Healing ● is usually enough to prevent mother or child from catching an infection, and Purification ● will at least let a healer spot an illness or infection in advance before it becomes serious.  

What about after birth?

  Scarterra is still a rough place and more often than not, mortals do not die of old age.     "Childproof homes" and "helicopter parents" are very much modern concepts.   Most Scarterran parents are prone to "tough love" than modern love than modern Western parents. It is commonly believed that bumps and bruises are good teachers, but obviously they don't want their children to die.   Sadly, every culture and era on Earth has seen its share of tragic accidents and tragic accidents disporportionally strike children and the elderly. Scarterra has all the same hazards that preindustrial Earth humans had to deal with plus this is a world with literal monsters as well as figurative monsters.   Some monsters actually show restraint when it comes to children but many attack children and adults indisriminately. Some supernatural threats prefer targeting children such as the infamous Shadow Creeper or fae such as Qalupalika.   There are supernaturally empowered defenders of children too, but in this case its tilted towards the monsters' favor because the defenders have to be successful 100% of the time and the monsters only have to be successful once.   Even then, about 80% of Scarterrans will make it to adulthood rather than 50%.  

Downstream Effects of Reduced Child Mortality