If I was reading a book, and a young child died, I wouldn't put it down if it was a good book. Sometimes, when a child dies in a story it gets to the reader, and sometimes the reader may want to just continue to make sure that the killer got his/her face beat in at some point.
While I don't delight in the gruesome deaths of children, I have loved stories where it happens. For instance in Kino's Journey, the script called for an episode where Kino chances upon two starving men caught in a storm and has to decide whether to kill the rabbits to feed them or let the men starve. She decides that a human life is worth more and kills the rabbits, only to find out later when they turned against her that these scumbags were child smugglers and had eaten the children they were smuggling when they ran out of food, leaving the bones scattered in the back of their truck. I found this episode very shocking, but there was a moral value behind it which made me feel like the deaths were worth it. With that said, I don't think we should be the ones to tell you what's crossing the line or not because that's up to the author. Like dns mentioned earlier, you [the writer] have the creative authority to do whatever the heck you want. And if killing off a character - whether they be child or adult - serves to further your plot, then so be it.
Sorry to be off-topic but I thought that episode was brilliant - Being Human is very well written generally but I thought that scenario was particularly well handled. The turning of the dying child wasn't used as a Deus Ex Machina to give the kid a happy ending and the question of whether it was the right thing to do was left very much up to the viewer to decide for themselves.
If the book is good, I wouldn't put it down, and whether there is a child's death in it or not wouldn't make the difference. If the book is terrible I probably wouldn't get to the scene with the child's death because the book will be on fire in the trash can.
I think it's about what lies around the things that happen more than it's the things that happen. When the Comedian in Watchmen executed a woman pregnant with his own child and felt no remorse what so ever, I was almost putting the (graphic novel) book away. Not that mothers and children have never died in fiction before, but there was a nihilistic cynicism in it that the author allowed to be, and I think that's why it made me react that way. To this day I maintain a love/hate relationship to Watchmen, because it's brilliant, but at the same time the most life-devaluating, pessimistic piece of writing I've ever read.
I like the above response. Plus: Child deaths in anything make me squirm--I have two little ones, so as a parent, seeing any child die makes me uncomfortable--but I know that sometimes it can be necessary for the story. I don't think saying "but it's reality" is a good argument. Sure, it is, but I read and watch to escape reality, not to be as uncomfortable as I would be in a real situation. Anyway, here are two examples of baby deaths and how they were treated: Predator vs. Alien: Requiem: A whole nursery of babies gets slaughtered. A maternity ward of mid-birth mothers (and, earlier in the movie, third-trimester women) gets impregnated with alien eggs and their unborn children obviously killed. The entire movie was basically an abortion commercial. Totally unnecessary. Some may disagree, but we see how gruesome the aliens can be without resorting to this... tasteless crap. The directors quite obviously wanted the shock value, and it turned me off the movie entirely. Entirely. What they wanted to be shock made me and a slew of others just not want to watch the movie. Entertainment turned to disgust. Visual violence: well... you get the picture. The Wakling Dead (comic, not TV): A character's wife and X-month-old daughter get blown away by a shotgun (mostly the mother). This leads to his downward spiral. Was it as gruesome as AvP:R? In a way, yeah. A baby girl gets blown out by a shotgun. Was it necessary? Yeah. The character couldn't have gotten to his nadir--loneliness, desparity, insanity--without it. And some of the issues immediately following that one are considered some of the strongest by the comic's fans (not just me). Visual violence: we see the buckshot go through the mother as she cradles the baby, the mother falls, and we see no baby blood or guts, only the baby's arm and hand. A lot less gore than AvP:R, but a ***-load more effective. The same gruesomeness, but entirely different goals with reversed levels of visual violence. One worked, the other was a 100% turnoff, i.e. one made the work stronger, the other weaker. Weigh it. If it's necessary, do it. If it would make people want to throw the book out, don't go there. But keep the description ungraphic and let the act, the scene, or the emotion do the work.
