Museum Explorer
Daily life in
Roman Britain
Mother and baby
From: Welwyn, Hertfordshire
Date: 2nd century AD
This little statuette shows a mother-goddess sitting in a chair breastfeeding her baby. Roman medical books recommended that children should be breastfed either by their mother or a wet-nurse until they were 18 months to 2 years old.
Many children died young in Roman Britain. Perhaps as many as one in three children died when they were babies, and many women also did not survive giving birth.
