18th Century Babywearing

Last updated: Jan 5, 2024

Babywearing – primarily on the mother’s back, but sometimes in the form of other baby slings – tends only to appear when the mother seems to be in the middle of walking for a significant distance. In England and western Europe, this tends to be more frequently seen with poor women (such as beggars and gypsies), but babywearing appears in illustrations from other cultures in the 18th century as well.

(Babywearing in the 14th-17th centuries is covered elsewhere on this website.)

(H/T to Klára Posekaná, who shared her research on this topic.)