Nursery World - Positive Relationships: Nannies

The triangle of mother, child and childcarer has always been complex, says Katherine Holden in Nanny Knows Best - The History of the British Nanny.

Tensions between mothers and nannies often centred on baby care methods, which in the interwar period began to be affected by new trends in child psychology. Until the Second World War, the New Zealand childcare expert Truby King and the American behaviourist John Watson dominated the field, influencing nanny training and parental advice manuals in Britain.

They generally advocated keeping a physical and emotional distance between mother or nurse and child and following a rigid routine. Regular times were allocated for feeding and all other activities. Babies were kept quiet and under-stimulated, with the expectation that they would sleep for 20 hours each day. This kind of advice suited many British nannies, who found it easier to keep discipline if children did not have much contact with their mothers. Nurses were taught to let babies cry.

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