Views Towards Children

During the 1700s views towards children were rather different than today. Although they were changing from previous eras. After the 1750s there was a boom in illegitimate children caused by the increased mobility of young people due to the rise of the cottage industry. This meant that many children were being born outside of marriage. Many of these young single mothers were unable to raise the children themselves and so would leave the child bundled up outside of a hospital, church or foundling home. The child would then be raised in a foundling home. It should also be noted that one-third of these babies were from married couples, suggesting that many families could not afford to raise more children.  Even in the best of situations, children raised in a foundling home only had a 50% survival rate.

An example of how to give a baby away.

However, overall, children did not have wonderful survival rates during this time. One in five was likely to die, and the mortality rate was higher in poorer areas. Therefore women would have many children to counteract the deaths, around half of the women of this time had six or more children. The high mortality was due to a lack of medical knowledge (and even concern) by midwives, doctors and parents. At this time, little could be done to save a sick child or prevent one from catching a disease. Unfortunately though, adults did not do much to help the infants and young children to survive. After all, the prospect of losing one's child, would push a person to not grow emotionally attached. Therefore parents would sometimes abuse or neglect their children in a variety of ways.
One was the use of wet nurses by the upper middle class and aristocracy. These higher class women saw nursing their own child as beneath them, and so hired someone else to do the job. Unfortunately, this meant the wet nurse often had to neglect her own child for the newcomer. Additionally, some wet nurses would let their clients' babies die in order to get onto another job. Poorer women tended to nurse their own children, but in some areas of Russia, babies were given just a sweetened rag to suck on. Predictably, this practice resulted in about half of the babies not making it past their first year.

Sweetened rags do not do this.

Additionally, some other parents would outright kill or abandon their child, because a baby meant another mouth to feed which was sometimes not feasible. While the Church did decry infanticide, it was still prevalent. One common method was "overlaying," during which parents would smother the infant they placed in their bed. Other children were left to foundling homes, as previously discussed.
Even if parents wanted to keep the child, the attitude at this in the early 1700s was "spare the rod and spoil the child." However, some thinkers of this time challenged these ideas and called for more love in raising a child such as Rousseau in Emile. Education of children also become more prevalent during this time, although illiteracy still remained common.