Medieval Childhood
In this illustration from the margins of a fourteenth-century French book of poetry, a mother carries her infant in a cradle. The baby is tightly swaddled in cloth, a common practice that came from medieval ideas about how children’s limbs developed and from concerns about an infant’s safety in households with open fires, where domestic animals walked freely, and where parents and older siblings had work to do. (Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY)