ABSTRACT
Dummies The use of the dummy also seems, among middle-class mothers, a matter for embarrassment. While working-class mothers took the question about dummies as a matter of course, even if they personally did not approve of them, middle-class women who had not made use of them were inclined to answer with some asperity, as if we really should have known better than to ask someone of their class such a thing; while those who had given the baby a dummy were at some pains to justify their action. The wife of a craftsman in his own business, asked whether she had tried to stop her child sucking the dummy, explained:
'Oh no-I deliberately gave it to him at six months; because he started to teethe, and he put everything in his mouth, and
