Babies: they are cute and everything, but what are you supposed to do with them all day? It has been a problem for busy parents for millennia. Precious, terrifyingly fragile and capable of wreaking untold carnage, they are profoundly inconducive to adult work. So, the central aim of childcare has long been safe containment.
Historians debate when childhood acquired a distinct status and children were viewed as something other than incompetent mini-adults, but anyone who has ever met a baby knows they are an absolute liability. The rich could hire childcare – wet nurses, nursemaids, even cradle rockers – but we know less about how ordinary people managed.
