Lovely little angels in heaven? The influence of religiously determined cultural life scripts on infant survival in the Netherlands, 1880-1920

"The way small infants are cared for, in the past as much as today, is partly determined by cultural scripts which may vary between places and times. In the past some of the cultural scripts involved in infant care were shaped by religious rules and traditions. These scripts could sometimes be life-saving, as was the case with the orthodox Jewish care of infants, or they could be lethal, given the circumstances. In Dutch historiography, the Catholic community has been held responsible for the rather high level of infant mortality during the later parts of the nineteenth century and the early d... Mehr ...