Don’t Forget the Children! A Review of the Consequences of Natural Disasters and Epidemics on Childhood Health and Mortality in the Past

ABSTRACT

Natural disasters, pandemics, and epidemics have devastating impacts on communities. Poverty, famine, ill health, social isolation, and death are some of the consequences of such events. Transformations in culture, religion, political and economic stability, and other social aspects can also be attributed to catastrophic incidents. Whilst such events have been well documented and studied, little attention has been given to their effect on children. Using osteoarchaeological and historical evidence, this review article explores how children appear to have been affected during, and in the aftermath of, natural disasters and epidemics. A range of cases from Antiquity to the modern day is provided, alongside three focal case studies. This research demonstrates analogies with the present-day where countries face disease outbreaks, droughts, floods, and earthquakes. Ultimately, the findings presented in this paper illustrate the extent to which these events shaped the lives and deaths of children in the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Epidemic
• pandemic
• natural disasters
• famine
• childhood health
• child mortality
• child sacrifice
• bioarchaeology

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Hugo Pérez Trejo for guidance in some aspects of this paper. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and comments in the preparation of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The United Nations Children’s Fund (2007) states that there are six facets of child well-being, namely: educational well-being, health and safety, behaviors and risks, material well-being, relationships, and subjective well-being (the latter takes into account children’s own sense of well-being, i.e. how they feel about health, education, and personal well-being). This definition relates to children living in the twenty-first century but many of these considerations can be applicable to children living in the past (e.g. Squires 2020). In this article, the different aspects that constitute child ‘well-being’ are explored in variable amounts of detail in the context of catastrophic events.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirsty Squires

Kirsty Squires is an Associate Professor of Bioarchaeology at Staffordshire University (UK). She is interested in the archaeology of childhood, ethics in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, and the analysis and interpretation of cremated bone from archaeological and forensic contexts.

Esme Hookway

Esme Hookway is a PhD research student at Staffordshire University (UK). Her research primarily focuses upon juvenile human remains from medieval hospital sites in England.

Nicholas Márquez-Grant

Nicholas Márquez-Grant is a Senior Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at Cranfield Forensic Institute (UK). His bioarchaeological research is aimed at reconstructing health and disease in Antiquity in Ibiza (Spain).