ABSTRACT
In this contradictory scenario it is evident that many children of the past received a certain amount of parental care, otherwise the human species in Europe would have faced extinction. Nor we can accept the idea that parents always acted in direct opposition to their biological fitness: the choices of wet-nursing or swaddling, for example, are understandable if we consider them within a number of environmental variables. However, there is no doubt that children belonging to noble, rich or bourgeois families (in particular first-born children) were those who received the most attention. For the other children, life was very difficult: when the living conditions of the adults were very precarious, the risks for their children increased during pregnancy and after childbirth because of different forms of neglect and abuse (Stone, 1977).
