Welcome to the Baby Historian! In part one of this series, I covered the births of Jane Austen and her seven siblings, and the child care strategies of her parents during the 18th century in England. Across the five episodes of the second part, I will show that Jane’s attitudes […]
What if crawling is unnecessary? There are cultures in which babies are not allowed to crawl and are never given floor time. What effect does that have on their development?
Can an infant carrier stop your baby’s cry hole? Science says… probably not. But it might make you feel better.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some infallible trick to calm a crying baby? According to science, there just might be. (Get on your walking shoes.)
With the talk of which culture has the exclusive rights to this or that, some have wondered if people of European descent should use infant carriers at all. To which I can only groan (and share this post).
It’s not just that human babies are helpless at birth, it’s that they’re so huge, at least when we compare them to the size of other apes’ newborns. Fortunately we have all kinds of technology to help us carry them around. But how far back in history were our evolutionary ancestors dealing with these big babies?
This work is part of my project, The Evolution of Babywearing, which explores the evolutionary origins of the infant carrier and how it has shaped humanity as we know it. Many moons ago at a family gathering, a relative was complaining about her baby’s fussing, “He won’t let me put […]
Why is it that some mammals can just leave their babies in a den or nest, while others carry theirs around (or have them cling on) through out the day?
