Quite the contrary, I think. Society has become "soft", for lack of better words. If we had been so risk-averse centuries ago, the industrial revolution would have never happened.

That sort of argument might work well for a time when slavery was a recent memory and children frequently worked in factories instead of going to school. That doesn't mean it works equally well for the present day, or for the kind of future most of us would probably prefer.

Why is it children injured by robots who need to toughen up rather than the people nostalgic for a past they never experienced?

I'm confused. You think if we don't let robots break childrens fingers because we insist on proper safety, then the industry of physical chess playing robots might never get off the ground?

We could have had a perfectly good industrial revolution with more mechanical safeguards and less child labor.

If a machine is 20x faster than human labor, and making it safe knocks off 10%, that's fine. And it'll leave you with better employees over time. It's only a problem if you're in a race to the bottom that doesn't care about worker safety.

I meant it literally. It's difficult to raise children without thinking about them, and if we don't raise any children...

The industrial revolution and accompanying urbanization lowered birth rates.

Technological progress is not necessarily good for the species, although it can be (c.f. the advent of new agriculture methods creating more food post WW2).

'dont wish upon others that Wich you yourself cannot endure'