PART ONE OF TWO:
L. P. Hartley in
The Go-Between (1953) wrote "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.".
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._P._Hartley
In the era of the TNG, AD 2019 would be the past. So if a member of the Enterprise-D crew thinks about Earth in AD 2019 they might think: "AD 2019 is a foreign country, they do things differently there".
So thus we can think that: "The future is a foreign country, they will do things differently there", and that is equally true for fictional futures in alternate universes to ours like the era of TNG as it will be for real future eras.
As I write this it is still Memorial Day in the United States of America, a holiday started to honor soldiers of the Union army who died during The Rebellion, or the United States Civil War, and later extended to all deceased United States soldiers. And it is well known fact that in many ways they did things differently during the US Civil War than we do in AD 2019.
W.W. Gist, a veteran of the war, was annoyed by allegedly official statistics claiming that over a third of all persons enlisted in the Union army were under the aged of 19, so he wrote an article, "The Ages of the Soldiers in the Civil War",
Iowa Journal of History and Politics, July 1918, pages 387-399, to debunk them.
Gist's statistics do a good job of debunking the exaggerated claims for boys in their middle and upper teens in the Union army, showing that they were only a fraction of what the false statistics claimed, though still significant in numbers. But when it came to the really youngest soldiers in the Union forces, Gist's article does the opposite, and indicates they were much more numerous than the false statistics claimed.
Gist quotes them as saying there were 104,987 soldiers aged fifteen and under, 1,525 aged fourteen and under (thus making 103,462 aged fifteen), 300 aged thirteen and under (thus making 1,225 aged fourteen), 225 aged 12 and under (thus making 75 aged thirteen), 38 aged eleven and under (thus making 187 aged twelve), and 25 aged ten and under (thus making 13 aged eleven).
Gist quotes an official breakdown on the small minority of Union veterans surviving in 1917 and drawing pensions. Most of the older Civil War soldiers and many of the younger ones had died before 1917.
“On June 30, 1917, there were 329,226 survivors of the Civil war enrolled as pensioners. Of this number 38,190 receive pensions on account of general disability. The remaining 291, 036 receive pensions in accordance with their length of service and ages. The table showing their ages in 1917 is as follows:
62 years and under 66….3,113
66 and under 70 ….28,966
70 years and under 75…121,476
75 years and older….137,481
Total: 291,036”
https://historum.com/threads/ages-of-us-civil-war-soldiers.96404/
62 years was the minimum age since 1912 to receive a Civil War pension based solely on age and not on disability.
The 137,481 pensioners aged seventy five and older were all born before June 30, 1842 and were aged over nineteen in 1861 and over twenty three in 1865.
The 121,476 pensioners aged seventy to seventy four were born between July 1, 1841 and June 30, 1847 and were aged about fourteen to eighteen when the war began and about eighteen to twenty three when the war ended.
The 28,966 pensioners aged 66 to 69 were born between July 1, 1847, and June 30, 1851 and were aged between ten and fourteen when the war began and between fourteen and eighteen when the war ended.
The 3,113 pensioners 62 to 65 would have been born between July 1, 1851, and June 30, 1855, and were aged six to ten when the war began and between ten and fourteen when the war ended.
https://historum.com/threads/ages-of-us-civil-war-soldiers.96404/
So when the US Civil War ended in 1865 there were 3,113 service members who would be enrolled to receive pensions by June 1, 1917 and who turned fifteen on June 1, 1866, a year after the fighting was over, or turned fifteen months and years later. It is possible and probable that some of those soldiers enlisted in the Union forces aged thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, or even six.
Considering that about one fifth of all Union soldiers died during the war from battle wounds, diseases, and other causes, the 3,113 pensioned soldiers in that age range could mean that a total of about 3,891.25 soldiers enlisted age fourteen and under and that about 778.25 of them died during the war.
And i might point out that one of the most humiliating US defeats ever was The Battle of the Wabash or St. Claire's Defeat, November 4, 1791, during the Northwest Indian War against the Western Confederacy. 632 US soldiers were lost in the battle, and most of the survivors were wounded. And no doubt a proportion of the soldiers were musicians, and an unknown proportion of the musicians could have been boys of various ages who were killed or captured for later torture.
At the Little Bighorn, June 25-26, 1876, Custer's 7th Cavalry detachment of about 212 men was totally slaughtered. The Seventh Cavalry as a whole at the Little Big Horn lost a total of 268 killed and 55 wounded, of whom 6 died of their wounds. At the Battle of the Wabash the army was accompanied by about 200 to 250 camp followers (wives, children, laundresses, and prostitutes) who couldn't run as fast as the soldiers and so were almost all killed. Yes, at the Battle of the Wabash the number of civilian women and children with the army who were killed should have been about equal to Custer's detachment at the Little Big Horn.
Yes, they did things differently in the past, and possibly they will do things differently in the future.
PART TWO OF TWO:
Another thing to consider is that in a long and highly episode television series like TOS or TNG, most of the episodes may happen in alternate universes of their own, different from the alternate universes of other episodes.
The creators of early television series were very lax about continuity, and often had episodes contradict other episodes. There are examples of series where fictional dates of the episodes have no connection to the order they were produced or broadcast in; episodes in later seasons might have earlier fictional dates than episodes in earlier seasons. And I don't know if those creators thought about their lax approach to continuity and if they tried to justify it. If the creators of such a television show wanted to justify the weak continuity, and if they were science fiction fans, they might think of alternate universes.
They might think that each and every episode was something that might happen to the protagonists after the initial set up of their situation, and thus was something that would happen to the protagonists in one or more of the countless alternate universes diverging from the beginning of the show. So each episode would be in an alternate universe of its own, except for episodes which were sequels to other episodes.
So if every episode of TNG is in an alternate universe of its own, except for episodes which are sequels and parts of story arcs, most of the situations where the entire Enterprise-D and all its occupants - including civilians, families, and children - were in danger, would be in separate alternate universes of their own. And it is perfectly possible that there were thousands and millions of alternate universes where there never was a single battle or natural force that threatened to destroy the Enterprise-D for every alternate universe where it did experience such danger.
And it is possible that in every alternate universe where the Enterprise-D was in danger even once, the parents of all the children who were aboard at the moment of danger transferred to a starbase or resigned from Starfleet as soon as they could, and so removed their children from the potential dangers of the Enterprise-D.
I know of only three kids who were seen in dangerous situations aboard the Enterprise-D more than once. Many of the dangerous they encountered were in episodes that could have been in alternate universes of their own, separate from the alternate universe of other episodes. Thus those kids could have been endangered only once before their parents took them off the Enterprise in most of their alternate universes also.
But those three kids were seen and in danger in a number of episodes which were part of story arcs and thus were endangered several times during those story arcs. Of course their parents could have taken them off the Enterprise after the first dangerous experience in tens or hundreds of times as many alternate universes as the alternate universes in the story arcs where those kids were endangered more than once.
Those multiply endangered kids were Wesley Crusher, son of Dr. Beverly crusher, Alexander Rozhenko, son of Lt. Worf, and Molly O'Brien, daughter of Miles O'Brien and Keiko O'Brien.
