The history of babies is interesting for the wild swings of fashion from severe to indulgent care, and also for the way babies' lives reflect adults' fashions and politics.
Major differences in baby care often lie less between different centuries than between different classes. Rich Edwardian babies (1901-1910), for example, wearing layers of goffered, embroidered, lacy clothes, wheeled in a grand pram in the park by their nanny, displayed their father's wealth and status, just as their overdressed mothers did.
Christina Hardyment reviewed baby care manuals from Dr Locke's in the 1700s to Dr Spock's in the 1980s. Mothers were seen as naturally confident experts until towards the 1900s, when the professional experts (mainly men) claimed to turn baby care into a science for parents to study.
When it was usual to have eight, 12 or 16 children, boys and girls knew a great deal about baby care through helping to care for their siblings and also for numerous cousins. It is only quite recently that new parents may never have held a baby before their own, and may be unable to rely on their own or family's and friends' years of baby care experience.
For centuries, babies were swaddled on to a board, the bands wound tightly round the body and over the top of the head with a neck stay. This was to stop babies kicking their fragile bones about, and the thick layers kept down the 'stink and sourness'. Babies' linen was changed only once a day, if that often. The half-strangled babies tended to be quiet and sleepy, hanging from a hook, which set their mothers free for many other duties.
Newborn babies were fed with pap, thin gruel, wine, purges or other alternatives to breast milk, fully for the first days, and then alongside breastfeeding. Tight corsets and repeated pregnancies did not help mothers to manage to breastfeed, and richer families often called in wet nurses.
Many babies died from infections, and many were left in ditches or gutters by mothers who were too poor, or too ashamed after an illegitimate birth, to keep them.
Noble savage
One great change around 1700 came through the outrage that sea captain Thomas Coram felt about the dead and dying babies 'found' in London streets. He persuaded wealthy citizens to donate to build the Foundling Hospital. His friend William Hogarth and other great artists gave works of arts to the hospital, which became the first public art gallery.
Coram's friend Handel wrote glorious music for the orphans to sing at fundraising concerts. These destitute children became associated with fine art, uplifting music and Christian charity and were seen as less like worthless rubbish and nearer to the angels.
In the late 1700s, with revolutions in America and France, adults began to be freer in their clothing as well as their politics. They wore looser garments, while babies, too, were freed from their swaddling bonds and dressed in light gowns.
Rousseau's part-novel, part-childcare manual Emile describes how Emile is brought up as a 'noble savage', close to nature, with as little interference from adults as possible. Parents followed this fashion, treating their young children more tolerantly, though natural care could include daily and thorough icy baths.
All the earliest baby care books were concerned with babies' health and survival. Later books showed concern with children's education and their emotional well-being. Some authors warned against upsetting babies and leaving them to cry. One 18th century couple described how they taught their 14 children at home in ways as sensitive and child-centred as any modern author would advise.
Over the decades the care books became more 'scientific', based on doctors'
observations of babies in orphanages. Mothers were advised to feed babies four-hourly and not at night. A doctor claimed in 1840 that potty training could start at three months and be completed at four months. Bedwetting began to be mentioned as a problem.
Some experts advised mothers to be firm about forming habits, to leave babies to cry, and not to have them sleeping in their mother's or nurse's bed as they always used to. Cots and the new prams lessened the former close contact between babies and their carers. Bottle-feeding began to be promoted from the 1840s, and mortality rates rose.
The 20th century opened with great concern about 'unhealthy stock' - so many sick and 'feeble-minded' children; so many young men unfit to become soldiers. Gradually, the state intervened more in family life. The NSPCC had begun to protect children from neglect in 1884 (whereas the RSPCA began to protect animals in 1824).
At first, child rescue was linked to poverty and it was not until the mid-20th century that doctors identified physical abuse by parents, 'battered babies' and later sexual abuse.
The 20th century was the age of the child expert in paediatrics, children's nursing and health visiting, child psychology, community health, nursery and special education, welfare and social services. In the mid-century, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, John Bowlby and others taught not only about babies' highly complex feelings and relationships, but also about potential life-long effects from the care they received.
Over the decades, breastfeeding rates rose and fell. Fashions in treating babies strictly or indulgently, keeping babies most of their time with their mothers or else with other carers, continued to vary.
