The dangers that threaten child-life to-day in the more civilized communities are not the same that threatened the young of the herd-pack or the early lives of primitive men and women.
Then the mother had sometimes to defend her child against its own father, especially her girl-babies against the social fiat of death executed by the father's will.

Ancient folk-lore and myth show us many a struggle, intense and cruel, between mother-love and this group-sentence of death upon some of its young.

In case of war also the ancient mother had to protect her virgin daughters against outrage and capture, albeit so feebly and to so disastrous an end.

And war, since it is always and by its nature must be a return to savage conditions, now leads to the sacrifice of women and children in much the ancient manner; and faced by its horrors at close touch, the mother-instinct essays the old task to the same bitter defeat.
In peaceful periods, however, in the long ages when the father-rule was a despotism tempered only by natural affection and the skill of women in securing advantages while simulating submission, mothers had large use of their protective function in easing family discipline and in gaining relief from harsh conditions affecting childhood.

Theirs was then no open fight for the well-being of their offspring, and often not a wise effort to that end, but ancient song and story all show that childhood and youth depended upon the mother-love in crises of family experience and that without such refuge many young lives would have been utterly sacrificed.
=Social Elements in Modern Protection of Children.=--To-day the dangers to which babies and children are exposed are more subtle in form and more complex in action.