© 1998 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Articles |
Motherhood, Milk, and Money. Infant Mortality in Pre-Industrial Finland
* Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1QA, UK; e-mail: campop{at}lists.cam.ac.uk
SUMMARY This article presents as analysis of the levels, trends and deteminants of infant mortality in various regions of Finland between the late seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. Nursing habits were of critical importance as were diet and hygiene. It is suggesed that their were differenees in the frequency of breastfeedig with the landless being more and the farmers being less likely to breastfeed their children. In areas where cows milk was readily available as a substitute for breast mild other influences on infant mortality were the contamination of drinking water and the water in which feeding utensils were washed. At the end of the eighteenthcentury, in the south-west of Finland, the introduction of the potato created a suitable food for women and children and lowered the mortality rate of infants aged 3–6 months. By Contrast, in the regions where the first solid food given to infaints was chewed by the mothers, infant mortality remained high. In the part of Finland adjacent to St Petersburg infant mortality actually increased as local mothers were engaged as wet-nurses by the city's foundling hospital.
Keywords: infant mortality; breastfeeding; feeding; practices; pre-industrial Finland; regional variation; wet-nursing; female work; infections; seasonal variation