them from the stiffness resulting from being curled up so long.
His limbs are stretched indeed, but he is not allowed to move them.
Even the head is confined by a cap. One would think they were afraid
the child should look as if it were alive.

Thus the internal impulses which should lead to growth find an
insurmountable obstacle in the way of the necessary movements. The
child exhausts his strength in vain struggles, or he gains strength
very slowly. He was freer and less constrained in the womb; he has
gained nothing by birth.

The inaction, the constraint to which the child's limbs are subjected
can only check the circulation of the blood and humours; it can
only hinder the child's growth in size and strength, and injure its
constitution. Where these absurd precautions are absent, all the
men are tall, strong, and well-made. Where children are swaddled,
the country swarms with the hump-backed, the lame, the bow-legged,
the rickety, and every kind of deformity. In our fear lest the
body should become deformed by free movement, we hasten to deform
it by putting it in a press. We make our children helpless lest
they should hurt themselves.

Is not such a cruel bondage certain to affect both health and temper?
Their first feeling is one of pain and suffering; they find every
necessary movement hampered; more miserable than a galley slave, in
vain they struggle, they become angry, they cry. Their first words
you say are tears. That is so. From birth you are always checking
them, your first gifts are fetters, your first treatment, torture.
Their voice alone is free; why should they not raise it in complaint?
They cry because you are hurting them; if you were swaddled you