Are there cultures that don't go out of their way to "think of the children"?

Factual Questions
21

They protect their own group’s children. It’s outsiders’ children they kill.

22

The culture in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18th, 1978, did not protect their own children.

23

They thought they were protecting their children. They thought that by having their children die with them they were making sure that no one could convert them to what they considered evil ideas. They aren’t by a long shot the only people who ever killed their children thinking that this was the only way to protect them from an evil world. There have been many examples of parents killing their children before committing suicide themselves so that the children don’t have to exist in a world that they think will be bad for them:

24

When I was in high school, my family treated me as though I was capable of shouldering a lot of responsibility, and most of the time, when I was punished for something, it was for failing to be responsible. Even my high school, which seemed at the time to have a of of stupid and arbitrary rules (and it did), was pretty lax compared to what it would become. I went back and worked at my actual old high school eleven years after I had been graduated, and it was so much worse in the degree to which it infantilized the students. I don’t want to know what it’s like now, now that the first of the helicopter parents have children in high school.

I’m not opposed to “thinking of the children,” or protecting children, but I am against doing stupid things that someone thinks in theory might protect children, but in practice clearly don’t (like sex offender registries), or redefining demi-adults as children so we can smother them with our “protection.” Before we make some kind of law or rule “thinking of the children,” I want some good research behind it (bicycle helmet laws, for example). I think in the US the degree to which children are protected is becoming a burden for them.

I realize this isn’t quite on point, but I think the OP’s question needs to be addressed by asking whether there can be too much “thinking of the children,” and whether it’s always in their best interests in the long run.