Message #179220

[Sprite]

Working mothers
An added benefit of the six weeks of close watching was the relief thus granted to the mother from some of her most strenuous duties, thus aiding her recovery from pregnancy and delivery. In "The Changeling in the Thuringian Forest," the exchange of infants takes place when the mother leaves her baby alone in the house while she fetches wood, a common but strenuous household task. In other legends, {footnote 20} babies are exchanged when landlords force peasant mothers to do difficult harvest labor before their six-week recovery periods are past. These accounts thus impart the lesson that women recovering from confinement should not do work that takes them away from their newborn babies. The last line of one such story states the lesson succinctly: "And from that time forth he [the nobleman] resolved to never again force a woman who had recently given birth to work." {footnote 21} Interestingly, this prohibition is not described as being for the sake of the women, but rather for the protection of their children. But however stated, the mothers themselves shared in the benefits of this belief.

Although the welfare of the family (and of society at large) dictated that women recovering from childbirth be spared many of the strenuous tasks that normally were expected of them, the patriarchal bias of German society did not provide for a woman's workload to be lightened for her own benefit. The only acceptable justification for this temporary relief from strenuous duties was the belief that the woman's child was thus being protected from supernatural harm. Numerous other superstitions regulating a woman's post-confinement activities confirm this view, for example, the belief that "if a woman spins wool, hemp, or flax within six weeks of her confinement, her child will someday be hanged." {footnote 22} Consistent with changeling beliefs, this superstitious practice spared the recently delivered woman the hardest of the spinning tasks, not for her own sake, but for the protection of her child.