I guess I'm weird. I've known quite a few people that have buried their kids (from newborn to adult kids). A lot of them class-mates, class-mates of my brothers (For some reason my one brother's class there was like a drunk driving funeral almost every week for a few months during senior year) but a lot of adults I've known who have suffered this kind of loss. What shocks me sometimes is how many people I find out lost kids before I knew them. I know part of that is I'm not in a small village where I know everyone and people don't move in and leave hardly ever. I think what bothers me is the extra shame there seems to be. Like they'd rather admit to anything else, no matter how painful, illegal or immoral.
For me it is a tragedy every single time it happens, but something that is a part of life. I just wonder if when either we all knew each other better, or when it was rare for a family to be untouched by this kind of tragedy if there was this same level of shouldn't and shame. I think the tragedy level was always the same level of painfulness, even back when people had more births on average.
Although my one uncle was considered a bit insane because after nearly losing his bride before their first anniversary to a truly horrendous and nearly fatal pregnancy/birth he decided to get a vasectomy rather than risk her ever again. Some of that was what would happen if you lost the one kid, and I think some was not seeing her as replaceable.
I guess for me the "this shouldn't happen" is not just a bad things that really suck if they happen but things that are insane that we still allow them to happen because that is something we could actually fix if we wanted to. Like there are more than enough calories and nutrients grown in the USA every year that no child should die of malnutrition or starvation. Bad enough that we let people starve in parts of the world where agriculture can and does regularly collapse and there isn't enough food locally produced, but for kids to be starving in the land of plenty...to me that takes effort to make sure it happens on someone's part. We could easily prevent it if we wanted to. Just some portion of society doesn't want to. They prefer a system where kids die of starvation and malnutrition.
But no matter what we do, even in the best situation, people will die. Some of them will be kids. Some of the kids will die while their parents are still alive. Even if we had universal health care and world wide peace broke out including all countries and terrorists.
I do think a lot of parents do live in fear of what if it happens to me. It just bothers me sometimes the "this shouldn't happen" rather than "when this happens..." I think that gives a different mindset and a different empathy for the afflicted. But that may just be me.