ABSTRACT
In our own culture the sentimental appeal of infants is bound up with the image of the nurturing and protective mother: advertisements for babies' toiletries invariably include a smiling mother in physical contact with the child. This stress on the physical and emotional bond between mother and baby may simply be an outgrowth of our predominantly middle class ethic, since in our society mothers have to perform such functions, in the absence of servants or female helpers from the extended family who share them still in the Third World. In the Greek-speaking parts of the contemporary Mediterranean, it was common to find the motif of the mother nursing her baby. The conclusive finding of this chapter is that the Roman mother's relationship to her young child, particularly within the upper class, was not similar to the modern one. Modern interest in young children and stress on early training or influences seems to coincide historically with the development of Protestantism.
