What was infant care like in the Elizabethan age?
Even though the infant mortality rate was very high, parents still loved their children and felt their loss keenly. It was important to baptise children, and for the mothers to be churched. The wealthy classes would hire a wet-nurse to suckle their babies; in the royal family (Elizabeth I’s father) would send the baby to its own lavish household to be cared for. The poorer families would take care of the children themselves. It was the “done” thing for babies to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes – a practise that has seen something of a comeback in recent times. Children would wear miniature versions of adult clothes, though they would be much simpler as the child needed to grow and would require letting out and lengthening, or new clothes altogether. For toddlers, they would have leading reins, or ribbons, attached to the back. When boys were about seven years old, they would be breeched, or put into breeches. Here is a very good chapter about children (start on page 37):
