© Cor Snabel
Mortality rate among young children in the 17th century was high, the
poorer the parents, the smaller the families. The day laborers and the
poor had the smallest families, read the highest mortality rate. Then
came the farmers and shopkeepers. The landowners and the middle class
had the largest families. Some reasons are obvious; bad hygiene was
reason number one for infant mortality, but also negligence and
ignorance were scoring pretty high. The rich and educated had all the
advantages possible, they could provide a decent shelter and they could
read.
A very popular book about children's diseases, by Stephanus Blankaart,
was written in simple, understandable Dutch and not in Latin, like every
other medical book and most advise given was almost the same as today.
It was not only about diseases, but also contained a lot of helpful
tips, about breast feeding, nursing, toilet training, first aid, even
the first games and pedagogical lessons. A short summary: cleaning the
belly button of a new born with a soft, clean cloth and a little
alcohol, fresh fruit and vegetables, especially rose hip. No cuddling
the first minute the baby cries, no alcohol for the mother if she is
breast feeding, porridge made of half water, half milk and brown bread.
All these advices still stand.
But a lot of children died at young age. Less than half of all new born
reached adulthood, most infants died before their first birthday. The
reason for that, was mostly bad hygiene, with as result diseases, which
were fatal in those days. Even the “simple” children's diseases were
incurable.
A lot of habits disappeared during the years. One of those habits was
“bakeren”. The first two months the child was wrapped in swaddling
clothes from neck to feet, so it could not move. The classic reason was
the correct growth of the limbs (even Aristoteles and Plato wrote about
it), but it was also the best way to keep the baby calm, it was the
ultimate imitation of the womb. (I remember being tucked in very tight
by my parents and it felt good). By some it was seen as indolence of the
mother, cartoonists in those days loved to portray those babies as
packages hanging on a nail in the kitchen. This habit disappeared in the
18th/19th century, in Russia it was still common in the 20th century.
Another phenomenon was the wet nurse. In history books she is always
described as the “bad” woman. Normally her services were only required
in case the mother could not breast feed her child and in cases of
disease and death, but for a short period of time the elite had a wet
nurse as a status symbol. But these aristocrat pretences were pushed
aside by (even in those days) the hype of “natural” breast feeding as a
must.
By the time the infants were one year old and started to move around,
they got a dress, even the boys. By the time the boys were six, seven
years old they got man's clothes and the "lucky ones" had to go to
school.
marks FREE genealogy records.
Find out if your Surname is part of the Our Name in History Collection! Just type your surname into the search box
