This is going to be a gloomy blog, but in the end it may help us rejoice in the really great aspects of our lives.

We live very differently than our ancestors did… even our ancestors of just a couple of generations back. For instance, a North Cohocton couple in the late 19th century had four children. And in one horror-filled month, all four of them died, stricken down by one or more of the many diseases against which medicine could do nothing. Then in September they had another baby… and within a few weeks, she died too.

How they ever found the heart I don’t know, but eventually they had five more children, all of whom lived to adulthood.

People expected to lose AT LEAST one child at a very young age… it was part of the routine of life. My grandmother (born 1903) and Joyce’s father (born 1915) each had brothers or sisters that died in infancy. Nineteenth-century parenting manuals told mothers not to get emotionally attached to their children before their first birthday. Otherwise, you were just setting yourself up for heartbreak. (But even though they “expected” such losses, they were just as devastating for them as them would be for us.)

My work as a historian takes me into cemeteries, but I’ve taken to avoding Mitchellsville Cemetery. The long line of children from one family preys upon my soul.

Dig a little into the lives of prominent folks a hundred years ago and more, and you’ll find these tragedies. Glenn and Lena Curtiss lost their first child, Carlton, and the age of 11 months. Carlton was a “blue baby” with congenital heart problems. It was 10 years before their only other child, Glenn Junior, was born.

Glenn’s colleague Alexander Graham Bell had two daughters that lived into their eighties, but two sons who died in infancy. Four of John D. Rockefeller’s children had good long lives, but Alice lived barely a year.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had a child, the first Franklin Junior, who only lived a few months. There were two older children, and there would be two younger, including the second FDR Jr.

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower’s first child, Doud, was only three years old when he died from scarlet fever. John Eisenhower, their only other child, was born 19 months later.

Winston Churchil and Clementine lost Mary, their third child, to sepsis of the throat before she was three years old.

Grace and Calvin Coolidge had two sons. The younger, Calvin, died in the White House at 16 when he developed a blister after playing tennis. The blister became infected, and he died of blood poisoning.

Margaret Sanger lost her third and youngest child Peggy to pneumonia when she was five years old, a loss that haunted Sanger all her life.

Abraham and Mary Lincoln had but one child who lived to adulthood, their eldest, Robert. Eddie died at age four from tuberculosis; Willy died in the White House at age 11, from scarlet fever; Tad, who survived his father, died at 18.

Of Martha Washington’s four children, Jacky lived to be 26. But Daniel died at two, Frances at four, and Patsy at 16 in an epileptic seizure. Through Jacky Martha had seven grandchildren, of whom three (including twins) died in infancy.

We should rejoice that we do not suffer in the same way, thank to innumerable medical advances, not least of which is antibiotics. We have vaccines for many diseases. TB and scarlet fever, once commonplace, have become real rarities. The girls born in 1920 were the first cohort of which the majority lived until their children were grown.

Even so, we could do far better yet. The U.N. counts 183 countries in the world, and 41 of them (including many former Societ-bloc counties) do better than we do on infant survival (first year after birth). The C.I.A. lists 223 countries, and we come out 52nd (tied with Serbia). Looking at child (under-five) survival, out of 35 advanced countries we come in 31st – managing to beat out Turkey, Chile, Mexico, and Slovakia.

For some reason many of us are frantic that we should NOT get univeral health care. But we can aim for a more limited traget. How about this for a national commitment?

“The United States has the best rate in the world for the survival of infants and their mothers.”

Why not universal health care JUST FOR THEM – for mothers and infants from the time pregnancy is detected through the child’s first birthday. We can do it, or we can continue to let babies die at a rate that is completely avoidable. What’s stopping us?