ABSTRACT
Whilst the crowding in the working-class homes enforced a physical (if not mental) intimacy between parents and children, the spaciousness of upper-class villas permitted the relegation of children to remote parts of the house, out of sight and sound; and the employment of staffs of servants to supervise them relieved parents of the need to play any part in their early upbringing. Fathers were too grand and busy, and mothers too elegant and superior, to attend to the feeding and nurture of their numerous progeny. From the moment of birth a wet-nurse, or patent brands of baby food of dubious nutritious value, would be the instinctive and customary answer to the problem of feeding; mother’s figure and time to socialize took overriding precedence.1 Many children, surrounded in the nursery by nurses and nannies, were raised to feel that physical distance from the parent was right and proper. Gwen Raverat recalled:
I can never remember being bathed by my mother, or even having my hair brushed by her, and I should not at all have liked it if she had done anything of the kind. We did not feel it was her place to do such things.
