Bringing a baby into the world – and keeping them safe and happy – is no easy feat. Justin Pollard delves into the history books to find out how new mums and dads coped in centuries past
Everyone is full of advice for expectant parents right up until the moment the little bundle of joy actually arrives, at which point they’re pretty much left on their own. So what can history teach us about caring for a baby?
For the Romans, the heat was initially off as – due to the high infant mortality rate – Roman children weren’t recognised as fully human until around 40 days after their birth. And that’s assuming the head of the household considered the baby worth keeping in the first place, something they had an absolute right to decide when the newborn was first offered to them. The Vikings had a similarly robust attitude, and sickly babies – along with those that families could not afford to raise – might be abandoned and left to die.
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Once they had got past that first hurdle, Viking parents didn’t have to worry that too much of their time would be taken up with child-rearing, as there was a tradition of sending offspring to be fostered by other families. This drew communities together and gave the child another set of loved ones who might look out for them.
Setting a good example
Keeping a baby healthy in unsanitary conditions was tricky, and the ancient Egyptians achieved this by only fully weaning their children off breastmilk at the age of three or four. Notably, infant mortality peaked around that time as children moved on to solid, and less sanitary, food. Many would today agree with the Egyptians – except perhaps Dr Walter Sackett, who, in 1962, recommended starting babies on solids at just two days old. By three months he recommended that they should start eating bacon and eggs, and start drinking coffee three months after that.
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Education is of course a primary concern for many parents, and that begins by setting a good example. Zengzi, a student of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, once criticised his wife for promising their son a slaughtered pig in return for good behaviour. By deceiving the child, Zengzi argued that she had taught him to lie and not to trust anything she said. His wife’s reply is sadly lost to history. But too much education was considered a bad thing. The 1838 book Fireside Education tells the terrifying story of a mother who encouraged her precocious child so much that his head swelled, his arms shrivelled, and he was dead by 10. As the author charmingly puts it, “Premature fruit never ripens well”.
Lard and laudanum
One would hope that the modern era brought improvements in bringing up baby, but sadly mass communication has a nasty habit of publicising silly ideas along with the good ones. In the 19th century it was suggested that babies should be rolled in lard, presumably to keep them warm. It was also suggested in Cassell’s Household Guide from 1869 that the best way to make children obedient was to never give them what they want. Ever.
Affection was similarly frowned upon. The 1911 Handbook of Obstetric Nursing recommended that mothers only ever hold their babies when breastfeeding to avoid them growing into ‘little tyrants’. It also suggested never hugging, kissing or letting children sit on their parents’ laps, and only giving them a pat on the head if they’d done something extraordinary.
Meanwhile, to stop children ‘fussing’, other guides suggested giving them opiates. Punch magazine, for instance, satirically referred to laudanum as ‘The poor child’s nurse’. Today, laudanum is thankfully off the menu, but one piece of advice still rings true. In Thomas Hill’s 1888 Manual of Social and Business Forms, he recommended letting sleeping babies lie: “The time will come soon enough when care and trouble will compel them to waken in the early morning. Let them sleep while they can.”
This article was first published in the November 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed