Private Matters: American Attitudes Toward Childbearing and Infant Nurture in the Urban North, 1800-1860 [signed] [first edition]

Urbana : University Of Illinois Press, 1989. 1st Edition. Near Fine cloth copy in a very good plus dustjacket with slight edgewear. Tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Signed by author on the half title page. Description: 229 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. In twentieth-century America, women assume that they have the right to detrmine how they will bear and rear their children. This assumption was not always the case. Today's mothers owe a great deal to the independent middle- and upper-class women of the 1800's who felt free to discard conventional beliefs and behaviors concerning family formation and child care in favor of their own choices. Private Matters show how these women changed their practice and attitudes in response to new developments in nineteenth-century American society. Drawing upon a wealth of personal diaries and correspondence, medical texts and journals. Subjects: Motherhood -- United States -- History -- 19th century -- Mother and child. Urbana : University Of Illinois Press 0252015479 IE