How many nurses fulfil that demand?
Many, even of those least recognized by their employers as entitled to special gratitude and appreciation.

The point to be noted is, however, that even if experts for "hour-service" as nursery governess could be had in sufficient numbers and even if the majority of families could financially meet the expense of those fully competent, such service would not, as a rule, meet the needs of children under three or four years.

It is a constant task, not, indeed, requiring every minute of time, but requiring constant readiness to serve at need both day and night to start an infant along the required rules of daily habit.

And that task does not lend itself to the conditions of group-teaching or to the schedule of shared service of visiting experts.

Some one must be on the job all the time or it is not accomplished with success, although skilled personal care-takers can get fine results in gradually lessened attention by the time the baby becomes the child.
If there are several children in a family, however, the most competent mother, or substitute-mother, has the process to repeat with each newcomer, so that for every child we may reckon at least two years of very constant attention if the bodily habits of health and propriety and the first steps in social training for agreeable membership in the family are to be well taken.