Child Life in past Times

ferable struggle to live and the necessity of preserving a healthy verile stock probably stated their attitude to their weaker brethren. Many peoples including the Spartans, elts and Romans, for instance, required all newly born infants to submit to searching ?Crutiny to exclude evidence of poor development and physical defect. Some even lri:iposed rigorous tests of fitness, as for example the survival of total immersion in cold Jvater shortly after birth. Infants who failed these and other tests automatically forced the right to live, and were either killed outright or abandoned to die of exposure arid starvation. . A. fearful belief in theocratic influence and power did nothing to ease the burdens of '^fancy, and countless babies and young children were in addition mutilated, starved, pandoned or done to death in desperate efforts to conciliate wrathful gods, these ritUals taking a higher toll of girls than boys. Standards of child care in these early communities showed wide variation. The patriarchal civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, India and China treated their children e*l, but later, a change to patriarchal supremacy saw a wide and rapid spread of infanIcide with universal child slavery in India, whilst the child in China was compelled 0 become absolutely subservient to the adult. In. Rome and Greece children suffered from tyrannical regimes until the advent of hristian teaching exulted parenthood, and the Romans then emerged the first people nitroduce special legislation for the communal care of unwanted and deserted childElsewhere the Hebrews under strict moral and religious codes consistently lavished C^r(e on their young, and the Talmud describes their ancient protective ceremony salting" which invariably preceded the swaddling of their newborn.