During the black death, life expectancy at birth was - get this - 16.
It seems the english survived.
But it must have been brutal.
Imagine you are a 12-yo mother, with your first child, living on whatever you can.
By the time the child is four, it is an orphan, living like an animal.
The average was an average. What ended up more often was that by age 16, about a third of children had lost both parents.
There’s a reason so many fairy tales have evil-step parents. It was a norm for the society.