History of Babywearing

ANSWER: “Babywearing is the practice of using fabric or material or a designed carrier to essentially attach a child to your body, so wearing your baby, it’s not a fashion statement. It’s really a practice that goes back into cultures far older than the western culture that we live in now and I mean back to a time when people needed to wear their babies so that they could function. I mean you needed to be able to have a baby and still go and plow the field and then pick the food so that you could feed the rest of your family.

So babywearing essentially was born out of an essential need to survive and take care of these newborns while still performing work tasks. So to carry one’s child is a basic human instinct. Human babies are parent cleaners. They’re born before they’re fully cooked, so they need to be close to us to help regulate their breath, to help regulate their heart rate, to help regulate their temperature and also to help regulate their hormones. Babywearing gives the parent a lot of hormonal benefits also because the baby is right next to them. So the hormones kind of communicate in a circle and basically make everything for the baby and the parent a lot easier.”