Abstract

This article provides some historical perspectives on parental investment and childbearing. Scholars are debating whether parents always loved and nurtured their children. The historical record provides some support for both sides. Parents who abandoned their children often did so with the hope that someone else would be able to raise them. But others, like the ancient Carthagians, sacrificed their own children to appease the gods. Colonial Americans appear to have been particularly solicitous of the well-being of their children. The paper then traces the changes in the role of women in facilitating the process of childbirth in America. Scholars are cautioned not to idealize the childbirth experiences of women in the past as they experienced considerable pain and fear