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. With the entry of large numbers of women into factories and other establishments, the workplace and the home became separate entities, sometimes physically far apart, working hours that were long and tiresome and the conditions of work extremely difficult. Children could not be brought to the workplace, except those who were able to take part in the work, in order not to introduce diversions into the speed and order of the “assembly line”. Child care was more of a nuisance than childbirth, so informal institutions for child-minding sprang up in the community. Meanwhile, for a long time only young unmarried girls were employed in such establishments wherever possible to avoid the problems that inevitably accompanied married women. These were all considered private problems of the workers, and employers were not seen to have any responsibility on that score (Swaminathan, M. 1993).