> infant mortality before age 5 was around 20%, and this was down considerably from infant mortality in previous centuries

> Hence the need for a childrens tale to explain to the little ones why their infant brothers or sisters weren't coming home from the hospital

This makes no sense; if the problem was worse before, why would you suddenly need a new story for it? If the need was real, the relevant stories would have originated long before the 20th century.

The approaches that worked for the past 100,000 years also worked in 1904 and still work now.

(Also, the book is explicit that the children of Neverland found their way there by falling out of their perambulators (strollers); they did not fail to come home from a hospital.)