The past was not that cute

"A woman's work is never done."

In our agrarian past, the cultural division of labor at the time said that men worked the field, women ran the home. And that later job was brutal, never-ending, and consumed all waking hours until the day she died.

Men broke their backs in the field, women consumed their lives doing the ceaseless work that never ended, every waking moment. (And occasionally helped out in the field, too).

Running a family was a brutal two-person job -- and the kids had to dive in to help out the second they could lift something heavier than a couple pounds.

We forget so easily that for the entire history of our species - up until just recently - simply staying alive and somewhat warm and minimally fed was a hundred-hour-a-week job for mom and dad.

There are important downsides, but the Green Revolution - and dare I say it, the industrial revolution - was truly transformative for our species.

"and the kids had to dive in to help out the second they could lift something heavier than a couple pounds"

Earlier. Picking berries, seeds or ears of grain is something very small hands can do.

"We forget so easily that for the entire history of our species - up until just recently - simply staying alive and somewhat warm and minimally fed was a hundred-hour-a-week job for mom and dad."

But no. You are talking about a primitive (poor) agrarian society. That only started a couple of thousands years ago, while our species used fire since over a million years in a semi nomadic live style. And those tribes in good territory, they did not had so much back braking work, as long as big land animals were around. (Also, hearding cattle was for the most part a very chilled job as well, but that also started rather recent)

I would have thought herding or keeping large animals was quite dangerous, especially without modern technology. One of my wife's not-so-distant relatives was killed by a domestic pig.

Pigs are extremely dangerous for kids, but herding cows and goats is 100% something kids did. Source: I did it.

The village kids would get up, take the cows out to the road where the other cows also came, then together, a big group of kids and cows would head to a pasture and spend most of their day watching cows, playing games and messing about.

It was great.

Realistically the cows and goats took more care of the kids than the other way around.

A quick Google shows that ~20 people per year are killed by cows per year in the US. So not very dangerous, but not super safe either (cows kill more people than sharks - although that mostly shows how few people sharks kill).