ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the process of having children and their development up until the age of about seven, when relationships between parents and children began to change as children took on new responsibilities of formal education or work. It examines the ways in which the experience of childhood was formed through play and material culture. The use of childcare methods such as swaddling and wet-nursing may also show less about attitudes than the different ways in which childhood was understood and the impact of economic necessity. There is evidence that the functions of parenthood now associated with the role were becoming more concentrated in the biological parents and attitudes to the nature of children and childhood were also changing. Childhood also developed a rich literary and material culture. Parents were expected to feel unique emotions towards their children which were expressed in diaries, letters and in material culture such as simple gifts.
