“Before the 1900s, a high fertility rate provided no guarantee that a child would live long enough to support her parents. In a preindustrial, pre-demographic transition society with high fertility (say six children per couple) and high mortality (in which a child had only a one in three chance of outliving his father), the likelihood that a father would die without a living heir is at least one in six. In Britain between 1330 and 1729, 27 percent of all married men and 23 percent of all married women died without surviving children.”
―
Rachel Chrastil,
How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children
