How did cave women look after their babies?

[Lorddenning1]

Ok so I have a 6 week old baby and he has lots of stuff, a crib, Moses basket, cot and a a pod/nest, this is all for sleeping, don't get me started on a pram car seat, feeding stuff...
Back in the caveman times how did the ladies take care of the babies, like in winter how did they keep them warm, how did they keep the babies quiet so they didn't get eaten or killed by other tribes. What about nappies, was colic around then?

I often sit and wonder about these things, also how babies were made, did they just figure it out and then make the connection that everything they had sex, 9 months later a baby would appear,,,

Does anyone else think about these things or do I have cabin fever and need to get out more?

I'm not convinced this is true. More isolated communities = less of the communicable diseases that were some of the biggest risks to babies in later eras. No pollution. Animals - yes, but they had weapons, were in groups, and you can cancel out all the modern risks such as traffic. I think starvation/accidents were a major cause of death and responsible for the lower life expectancy, and breast-fed under 1s were probably the safest from those.

Of course medical conditions they couldn't treat were a high factor too for all age groups, but they couldn't be effectively treated until comparatively modern times, so not unique to early humans. Childbirth too was incredibly risky until recently.

Single cellar ancestor reproduced, they evolved in more complex organism with very basic sex organs, that then evolved…etc etc. a caveman didn’t rock up one day with a newly evolved penis out of no where, wanging it around and saying “where do I put this?” to cavewoman having a prod at her newly acquired vulva and vagina that had developed Overnight.
but the image you conjure up is 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

You know this is why I believe in creation. I can't get my head around how a single cell organism in a puddle can develop into multi organ animals, with bones, blood, veins and arteries with males / female reproduction.
I can buy the theory mamals evolved from other mamals. But where did the very first egg / sperm / milk producing mamals come from?

This is what I did. People used to comment that my baby never cried. Toddler years are a different story 🤣

@AndAllOurYesterdays I wonder whether you would have felt the same if you'd been with breastfeeding women all your life? I wonder if in some communities you could have just handed her to your sister and said "here-feed this. I need to go for a walk"

Babies have always been treasured. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-year-old-burial-of-baby-found-in-italian-cave-180979224/#:~:text=Archaeologists%20studying%20a%20cave%20in,years%20ago%2C%20reports%20Brian%20P.

I agree, personally would want to see the evidence before assumptions made about high mortality rates and very much doubt they were anywhere near the astronomical mortality rates children faced in 19th/20th century institutions

@Needanewname42 "You know this is why I believe in creation."
I don't want to derail this discussion- but evolution does explain all of this stuff. Honestly it does!

Sleeping close together like kittens in a basket, babies holding their mum like monkeys do. Raising kids collective. Wee is wee, not much of and issue. Poop can be clean, some mammals lick it the first days.
There is a tribe, I don't remember where that only breastfeed untill three months, once the poop is solid is easy to clean.
We don't need three different gadgets for a baby to sleep, that is just us for commodity. We don't need prams or push chairs, however are one of the most useful things we can have to allow ourselves better mobility.
We need to bare in mind that people were more agile before. Now we use stuff than he didn't have before.
With all of that mortality in infants and mothers giving birth was very very high. No wonder why without some stuff. Overall the species manage to survive.
The species, not most of the individuals

I agee theyd be less disease.

But I disagree on birth beong more dangerous. My theory is wild animals birth without much help. Any that can't get stuck causing death of both mum and baby. Wild animals, even farm animals never seem to need 'stitching' after the birth. Open wounds would make infection and probably death.

Humans have been interfering with birth for centuries, so babies that are too big are more likely to survive and go on to produce other babies that are too big and cause more issues.

Modern day gadgets are mostly
Not designed by pedagogs and serve little
purpose. However, excellent marketing leads us to believe that they are essential. They are not.

For example, disposable nappies which prevent that wet feeling actually prevent natural toileting. Babies do not like to feel wet or soiled and will instinctively develop bladder control much earlier, as a PP said, without them.

However, culturally, the majority of us cannot imagine parenting without them.

Isn't the traditional method in China no nappies, but clothing slits and very attuned parents/early trained babies?

People didn’t know why their infants died- or how to p them free of disease and life threatening illness. many will have in infancy or as children. Few made to adulthood. Life was short and brutal. If you made it past child birth you will have been lucky.

I didn’t have a mobile phone, let alone kindle or internet when my oldest was born. You just got on with it as you didn’t know any different, in the day time you fed while balancing book or magazine and at night feeds seemed very slow. My youngest is a toddler and yes of course life far easier with phones to distract them, internet shopping, funded childcare, you quickly get used to life being easier. Think modern mums are under a lot of illusions about a network of random family that were always caring for their babies for them, yes family and friends would help with school pick ups etc but now there are after school clubs, think the intense work of baby/toddler care was always mostly down to the mothers

I've seen that on TV, but mentioned it to a Chinese person who thought I was talking nonsense.
So it might be in some rural parts of China but not in major cities like Shanghai

I think being very attuned to your baby is key. Modern living is very fast paced and so we do things quickly, lots of commodities are designed to keep the baby quiet, enabling us to maintain our busy lives.

This just wasn't the lifestyle up until relatively recently in the history of humans. We observed- our babies, our family, our surroundings, our environment, and built up our knowledge, forging bonds accordingly.

We are too busy and distracted to do that these days!

But life for mums was so different even in very recent times. My mum would often mention how in the early 50s you would expect babies to cry or to hear crying babies a lot. She'd remember her own mother having a routine and she'd have to stick with it. Not at all in an uncaring unkind way but with a large family and no fridge or freezer and no washing machine you just had to get things done. One of my aunts as a baby was very colicky and two of the neighbours used to call in and take the screaming baby off with them for an hour in the big prams they had when they were doing errands. They'd pop her in with their own children in the pram and the movement soothed her. Whereas nowadays how often do you read posts where people are complaining about normal noise from children

Babies would probably have been exclusively breast fed, so if the mother died in childbirth, I guess you would need to find a wet nurse - a mother whose baby had died. Otherwise the baby would die as well.
(Yes, I know they had a kind of bottle in medieval times, but cave man??).
I suspect babies would be tied to their mother's, so they could a) feed on demand and b) allow the mothers to continue working, etc.
Sleepwise, I suspect they would all have slept together.
Nappy wise, they would stuff the legs into a bag of dead leaves etc, which is what I read the Inuit people used to do. So I imagine this would happen elsewhere, but otherwise, no idea. Except I would imagine that toddlers were toilet trained earlier.

@BigButtons "Few made to adulthood."

I'm not questioning you- but could you share your sources? I'd love to know more.

"we" almost went extinct, populations disappeared, re-emerged. For hundreds of thousands of years there were hardly any people's on earth. You only have to look at population estimates, and fossil records of various peoples to see how many died out. The reasons are conjecture, of course, but population increase is a very recent phase in our history.

@Hatecleaninglovecleanhouse "I'm not convinced this is true. More isolated communities = less of the communicable diseases that were some of the biggest risks to babies in later eras. No pollution. Animals - yes, but they had weapons, were in groups, and you can cancel out all the modern risks such as traffic. I think starvation/accidents were a major cause of death and responsible for the lower life expectancy, and breast-fed under 1s were probably the safest from those.

Of course medical conditions they couldn't treat were a high factor too for all age groups, but they couldn't be effectively treated until comparatively modern times, so not unique to early humans. Childbirth too was incredibly risky until recently."

This is an interesting take. It was thought up until recently that infant mortality amongst Neanderthals and in that era in general was around 40%, and that 1 in 2 children died in childhood. This has been based on burial site data. However the more recent take is that all this shows is that some children were dying - it doesn't show anything about the number of children that survived. So the current thought (as far as I understand) is that they basically don't know because they don't have enough population data

I wish I could give them! I’ve read loads of books on the history of childhood- a lot of it shocking. For example with the feeding of pap on old rags- the mortality rate under one year old was 50% not just because of lack of nutrition but because of the non understand of bacteria . Rags were not sterile.
Read loads online over the years- exhibitions, tv progs.
it makes sense. Most species would not expect most of their young to make it to breeding age.

Am I right in thinking that some people groups used/ use (not sure whether this is current or not - you can tell this is a very hazy recollection!) moss as nappies? Working (I imagine) a bit like the disposable liners you can use with reusable nappies today.

I suspect they got smacked into instant obedience at a very young age. Otherwise they wouldn't have survived. Harsh but not as harsh as getting eaten/ falling into fires/ etc. In modern society, we're able to parent differently because the consequences of disobedience for our children are normally not fatal.

I may be wrong, but as far as I know, it's modern Western civilisation that's the outlier in parenting without corporal punishment. (I'm not saying there aren't/ weren't other civilisations that did this, but just that they're in the minority. I'm also not saying that we should use corporal punishment - I don't! - but I do understand why you would in a society where if your child disobeys you they might die.)

@BigButtons but "cave women" wouldn't have done that. They would have breastfed by default, for a start.

I think it was very dependent on the particular society/groups , just like now. For example some countries/groups have significantly higher maternal/infant mortality rates and they are not necessarily the poorest/least resourced e.g. for example evidence has long shown even today that where women are respected and empowered then children do much better as generally mothers will try and so what is best for their children (Sorry if this offends anyone and my DP and DH are both wonderful but there are many men in the world who are not their children’s strongest advocates) where women lack the control over their lives to do this then the children inevitably suffer, this has been proved time and time again. Breastfeeding will usually be successful if mothers are well supported but for example where they had pressure to leave their babies to work or do other duties or it was seen as unladylike and unsafe substitutes were used then this had obvious consequences. Similarly in cultures where women denied food and medical care due to gender inequality or subject to harmful practices, FGM today or for example in the past subject to obstetric practices that did more harm than good (it was actually the poor women who couldn’t afford what was actually quite harmful care that fared better). Just like now, there were probably wild variations in infant mortality rates in caveman times depending on the particular society/group.
Births probably wouldn’t occur yearly in women who are exclusively breastfeeding as fertility is significantly reduced during this period so I very much doubt where they do occur yearly women are being supported to do this. Also many exclusively breastfed babies don’t pass stools very often after the first 6 weeks (mine only went every 2 weeks) so many things we think of as would of been issues without all our modern conveniences were not necessarily such big issues. That’s not to say we wouldn’t find it very difficult being plunged into such a world without all the experience they would of had