Aztec children were valued creations. Language used in rituals compared infants to precious stones and feathers, flakes of stone, ornaments, or sprouts of plants. The duty of parents and society, however was not to indulge but to socialize the child, so that they would not become "fruitless trees," as an Aztec proverb stated. According to sources written shortly after the Spanish conquest, such as the Codex Mendoza, society placed a high value on conformity, obedience, and decorum. The section of the Codex Mendoza that depicts daily life shows gender-specific punishments used in raising children. The image seems to show a sequence of punishments, first threatening the boy and the girl with three maguey thorns, the spike of the agave plant. In the second image, the woman is administering punishment to the girl by piercing her arm with the maguey thorn; the boy is pierced more severely in the neck, flank, and hip, and he is bound at the wrists and ankles. In the third image, the punishment of striking the child with a stick or rod is being carried out. In each case the image shows the children weeping profusely as the threat or the punishment is administered.

Annotation written by Susan Douglass.

From the time of birth, children in Aztec, or Nahua, society were socialized into gender roles. In the birth ritual introducing the infant to society, symbolic objects clearly differentiated. Boys were to be warriors and craftsmen, and girls were to tend to domestic chores. Articles of clothing—loincloth and cape for the boy, shift and skirt for the girl—were given to the child. The umbilical cord of the boy was buried in a field to associate him with the battlefield; the girl’s cord was buried in a corner of the house, each space signifying the sites of social productivity. The image from the Codex Mendoza depicts ways in which childhood socialization patterns differed for boys and girls, systematically divided into panels on the left and right sides of the page, each vignette separated from the other by a line. In each scene, male and female adults preside over raising boys and girls, respectively. From infant to adult, children were classed into age-cohorts, each with its expectations. A ritual called izcalli took place every four years and involved a purification ceremony for children of that cohort in a fire with the acrid smoke from chili peppers. The image shows a small boy being held over the fire, the girl in front of it. Children were also held up by the head or neck to make them grow tall; their ears were pierced with maguey thorns for later ornaments. Other scarification rituals took place at various stages of maturity. After the age of four, children became responsible for gender-specific chores, and began to wear adult-like garments. They were socialized into patterns of speaking, showing respect, and sitting in gender-specific postures. Boys learned endurance, sleeping bound on the cold, wet ground; girls perfected sweeping rituals for purification of the house. The boy is taught to carry firewood, while the girl learns to grind maize and make tortillas. The image on the bottom shows an older boy learning to fish, and the girl weaving spun thread on a back-strap loom—both tasks that would require a child to reach a certain size and strength. These measures in early childhood may reflect brief life expectancies in which every member of the family had to contribute to the prosperity of the society.

Annotation written by Susan Douglass.

Father Alberto Maria De Agostini, a missionary, took this postcard image on Isla Grande, Tierra del Fuego, on the southernmost tip of South America. The photograph, taken circa 1930, shows a man, woman, and two children walking through a clearing surrounded by thickets. The man and boy are carrying bows and arrows, and the younger child walks close to his or her mother, who is carrying bundles on a frame on her back. The family members wear robes made of guanaco hide, a South American animal similar to a llama. The woman and children are barefoot. The man wears shoes of fur-covered hide and a cone-shaped hat.

This family belongs to the Ona tribe, or Selk'nam, whose existence in the area near the Strait of Magellan can be traced back at least 9,000 years. The Ona, one of several distinct tribes in the region, lived as hunter-gatherers. Europeans have known of this group since Magellan named the land after their fires, which he saw burning on the coast. Charles Darwin described them in the journal of his voyage on the Beagle. Since then, missionaries have visited and lived among them, settlers have displaced and even hunted them, and anthropologists have attempted to study them to understand life in the Stone Age. Death from diseases brought a sharp drop in their population, which had numbered in the thousands. According to the last census of native populations in 1965, only 300 Onas remained. The last full-blooded Ona person died in 1995 in Argentina.

The quotations below relate normative examples of parents' behavior upon the death of a child. In the first hadith, or narrative from the life of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, Aisha, wife of Muhammad, asks about the salvation of those who have suffered the death of one or more children. The query is answered with the message that God compensates this suffering of parents with the reward of Paradise. The second example recounts the death of Muhammad's own grandson and describes his reaction to the death, specifically his tears of grief and explaining this outpouring of emotion as a mercy of God and a sign of mercy among family members. The third example concerns the death of Muhammad's own child, Ibrahim, when he was only a toddler. He explains that resignation to the will of God does not preclude emotion, and while he characterizes such emotion as a sign of human compassion granted by God, he also places limits on excessive displays of grief. These examples relayed in the hadith collections were featured in medieval consolation treatises which described the phenomenon of grief, but set Islamic guidelines on its public and private expression. Such treatises are interesting to scholars because they attest to the high rates of infant mortality, and also because they provide evidence that even in the face of high infant mortality, parents did become attached to their children despite the high risk of loss, and gave themselves over to love of infants and small children.