"For example there are a lot of beautiful folk/trad. songs about working in the mines, or on ships about the hard work and frequent difficulties, but what about contemporary songs about how the women felt about losing their men (father, lovers, husbands, sons)"

There's a fair bunch of these, such as this one or this one, The Recruited Collier with the lines that always send a shiver down my spine:

He hewed the very coals we burn
And when the fire I'm lighting
To think the coals was in his hands
It sets my heart to beating