Tea at Trianon: Working Mothers and Their Babies

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Working Mothers and Their Babies

Is breastfeeding possible? An intelligent article.

Back in the day, breastfeeding was the only way to go because formula was not a safe option. In fact, the rates of death were somewhere between 50 and 90 percent, and the concoctions were something like bread broth, crumbs cooked in milk or water, or even milk with eggs and spices and sugar. Yiiiiikes! So the babies who did live on artificial food usually weren't exactly thriving.

In the industrial 18th century in the UK, there was a drop in breastfeeding, likely because more women went out to work. The amount of women in the workforce seems to be directly related to the drop in breastfeeding. It's not like they had laws to provide them with time and a place to pump breastmilk. I'm sure they didn't even have good breast pumps.

This detail was put together by researchers at Oxford University. They recovered 162 skeletons from a graveyard in Spitalsfield, London, and ran a bunch of tests on them. Of the 72 child skeletons, 32 were babies who died before their second birthdays. By looking at levels of isotopes in the bones using a method called 'stable isotope analysis,' they were apparently able to see which babies were breastfed for certain amounts of time and which were not, along with seeing cultural trends in breastfeeding as well. (Read entire post.)

Divine Theatre said...: What a sad sign of the times when women fail to set their priorities correctly. A nursing child needs its mother. That goes without saying.
Now these mothers not only abandon their children but they DEMAND that their employers pay them to be unproductive employees?
These women have failed as mothers and employees.; November 17, 2011 at 12:14:00 AM EST