Innovation et comportement parental en milieu urbain (XVe-XIXe siècles)

Innovation and Parental Practice in the Urban Environment Putting a child out to nurse, a very ancient aristocratic custom, is no longer an exceptional practice in French cities of the 18th century. How is such a shift in practice to be explained on the part of the parents, knowing all the risks to which the nurslings were subject to when seperated from the maternal breast? The obstacles to maternal nursing seem to be of several types : natural, material, and above all socio- cultural. The attitude of the father is fundamental : he encourages putting the child out to nurse as means of protecting the conjugal life which in turn soon leads to the limitation of the number of pregnancies of the wife and to the appearance new family model. It is then asked as a related question if the European and Christian tradition privileging bearing children in the arms (and not on the back) might not have incited mothers to have their children carried and then nursed by hirelings.Chamoux Antoinette. Innovation et comportement parental en milieu urbain (XVe-XIXe siècles). In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 40ᵉ année, N. 5, 1985. pp. 1023-1039