The History of maternal protection goes back only to the period after the Industrial Revolution. In the pre-industrial period, the vast majority of the people, both men and women, were workers, and women everywhere managed childbirth and child care as best they could, with the help and support of other female members of the family. The upper classes employed domestic servants, including wet-nurses, for the care of their children and to feed infants, and neither childcare nor breastfeeding were seen as appropriate activities for more privileged women.