Early modern English people were obsessed with making babies. In this fascinating new history, Leah Astbury traces this preoccupation through manuscript letters, diaries, recipe books and almanacs, revealing its centrality to family life. Information was plentiful in guides on the burgeoning fields of domestic conduct and midwifery, as well as in the many satirical ballads focused on sex, marriage and family. Astbury utilises this broad source base to explore all aspects of early modern childbearing, from conception to the months after delivery. She demonstrates that, while religious and cultural ideals dictated that women carry out all of this work, men were engaged in its practice through directing medical decisions. With the entire household including servants, wetnurses and other unexpected actors included in the project, childbearing can be situated within the histories of gender, medicine, social status, family and record-keeping. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
‘Childbearing was never natural, and motherhood was never simple. Leah Astbury takes on the political and social project of ‘making babies’ and the relationship of motherhood and labour, and patriarchy and family. In so doing she unpicks the broad spectrum of emotion - yearning, grief, joy, anxiety, boredom, frustration, pain and pleasure, love and hatred - which lay behind conception, pregnancy, birth, and the care of children, and reveals the many different practices of men and women which fed into the gendered production of care. A revelatory take on domestic life and an imaginative work of historical engagement.’
Hannah Murphy - King’s College London
‘Early modern English people were obsessed with making babies. In this fascinating new history, Leah Astbury traces this preoccupation through manuscript letters, diaries, recipe books and almanacs, revealing its centrality to family life. Information was plentiful in guides on the burgeoning fields of domestic conduct and midwifery, as well as in the many satirical ballads focused on sex, marriage and family. Astbury utilises this broad source base to explore all aspects of early modern childbearing, from conception to the months after delivery. She demonstrates that, while religious and cultural ideals dictated that women carry out all of this work, men were engaged in its practice through directing medical decisions. With the entire household including servants, wetnurses and other unexpected actors included in the project, childbearing can be situated within the histories of gender, medicine, social status, family and record-keeping. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.’
Leah Astbury - Lecturer in Health History at the University of Bristol
Loading metrics...
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.
The PDF of this book complies with version 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), offering more comprehensive accessibility measures for a broad range of users and attains the highest (AAA) level of WCAG compliance, optimising the user experience by meeting the most extensive accessibility guidelines.
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get more than just short alt text: you have comprehensive text equivalents, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for substantial non‐text content, which is especially helpful for complex visuals or multimedia.
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
You benefit from high‐contrast text, which improves legibility if you have low vision or if you are reading in less‐than‐ideal lighting conditions.