{"id":329243,"date":"2025-12-03T14:03:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/birthmarks-and-historical-myths-of-maternal-responsibility-nursing-clio\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T14:03:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:03:18","slug":"birthmarks-and-historical-myths-of-maternal-responsibility-nursing-clio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329243","title":{"rendered":"Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility \u2013 Nursing Clio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3 class=\"blog-title\">Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility<\/h3>\n<div class=\"m-post-byline-with-avatar\" style=\"display:flex; align-items:center; flex-wrap:wrap; white-space:preserve\">\n<style><![CDATA[.m-post-avatars{ display: flex; margin-right: 10px; }.m-post-avatar{ border-radius: 100%; z-index: 1; }.m-post-avatar img { margin: 0 !important; border-radius: 100% }.m-post-avatar:not(:first-of-type){ margin-left: -7px }.m-post-avatar:nth-child(1){ z-index:1}]]><\/style>\n<div id=\"\" class=\"m-post-avatars\">\n<div class=\"m-post-avatar\" data-author-id=\"637\" data-author-type=\"user\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?fit=36%2C36&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-36x36 size-36x36\" alt=\"NC logo in blakc\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?resize=405%2C405&amp;ssl=1 405w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?resize=181%2C181&amp;ssl=1 181w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 36px) 100vw, 36px\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr\/>\n<p>\u201cYou ate a lot of strawberries when you were pregnant with that baby, didn\u2019t you?\u201d When I was a child, my mother heard this exasperating refrain from complete strangers. Shortly after I was born, I developed a large vascular birthmark, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK538232\/\">an infantile hemangioma<\/a>, on my face. Because bright red, raised hemangiomas resemble strawberries, people believed for centuries that infants bore these birthmarks because their mothers had eaten strawberries during their pregnancies or else badly craved them. They thought a pregnant woman\u2019s craving impressed the image of the longed-for strawberries onto her fetus. The theory of maternal impression \u2013 that a pregnant woman\u2019s desires, experiences, and thoughts could physically mark her fetus \u2013 was long discredited by the late-twentieth century. A few of the intrusive strangers who repeated the myth about strawberries to my mother seemed serious, while most appeared eager to inform her about \u201cthat old wives\u2019 tale\u201d \u2013 as if she hadn\u2019t heard it many times before.<\/p>\n<p>While myths about birthmarks and maternal impressions may seem like quaint folklore, they are a troubling example of the long history of blaming mothers\u2019 behavior during pregnancy for their children\u2019s differences and disabilities. As Latin was for centuries the language of science and medicine, the most common medical term for a birthmark was <em>naevus maternus<\/em>, or \u201cmother\u2019s mark.\u201d In contemporary European languages, too, the very words for birthmarks blame them on mothers and their desires. In German, a birthmark is <em>ein Muttermal<\/em>, \u201ca mother\u2019s mark.\u201d In Italian, it is <em>una voglia<\/em>, \u201ca desire,\u201d and a strawberry birthmark is <em>una voglia di fragola<\/em> \u2013 \u201ca desire for strawberries.\u201d Today, many researchers think that birthmarks originate with a cell mutation in the vascular system during fetal development. Yet in many respects, birthmarks remain mysterious. The theory of maternal impression proved long-lived in part because people sought a simple \u2013 if ultimately harmful \u2013 explanatory framework to make sense of medical conditions whose causes they did not understand. Where causation was unclear, ordinary people and medical experts alike defaulted to blaming mothers, their actions during pregnancy, and their runaway imaginations.<\/p>\n<p>Ancient Mediterranean writers wrote about the powerful influence of pregnant women over their fetuses. In the first century CE, the Roman author Pliny the Elder <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/Natural_History_(Rackham,_Jones,_%26_Eichholz)\/Book_7\">wrote<\/a> that pregnant women\u2019s diet, \u201c[their] gait in walking,\u201d and their \u201crecollections of sights and sounds and actual sense-impressions\u201d all influenced the appearance and health of their children. Pliny\u2019s assertions likely reflected popular beliefs in the ancient world. Medieval European writers later cited ancient authorities like Pliny when discussing birthmarks, for which they also blamed mothers.<\/p>\n<p>The belief that birthmarks resulted from maternal cravings, especially thwarted desires to eat fruit, circulated widely in premodern culture. European Christians believed that just as Eve brought sin into the world through her unquenchable desire for forbidden fruit, a pregnant woman who uncontrollably desired fruit might impress its image onto her unborn child. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/lesvangilesdes00fouq\/page\/n7\/mode\/2up\">One male writer in late-fifteenth-century France<\/a> satirized women who declared that pregnant women should fulfill their cravings to avoid marking their fetuses with birthmarks that resembled strawberries, cherries, or red wine. The fictional Frenchwomen turned maternal impression into a boon for pregnant women, suggesting that there could be dire consequences if they were not brought the food they craved.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-0\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-0\">[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_35793\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35793\" style=\"width: 273px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35793\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hoematoncie-framboisee-par-alibert.jpg?resize=273%2C405&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\" The color plate shows a young girl with a hemangioma birthmark near her heart, and it is labelled &quot;hoematoncie frambois\u00e9e,&quot; the author's term for a strawberry-like birthmark.\" width=\"273\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hoematoncie-framboisee-par-alibert.jpg?resize=273%2C405&amp;ssl=1 273w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hoematoncie-framboisee-par-alibert.jpg?resize=487%2C723&amp;ssl=1 487w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hoematoncie-framboisee-par-alibert.jpg?resize=768%2C1141&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/hoematoncie-framboisee-par-alibert.jpg?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 273px) 100vw, 273px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35793\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The image is from Jean-Louis-Marie Alibert, Nosologie Naturelle, ou les maladies du corps humain distribu\u00e9es par familles (Paris, 1838). <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcomecollection.org\/works\/uxaf2ufr\/items?canvas=447\">Wellcome Collection<\/a>, Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the early modern era, philosophers now associated with the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire and Descartes, confidently wrote about how pregnant women\u2019s imaginations shaped their fetuses.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-1\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-1\">[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Increased literacy among women in Europe and its colonies meant that more women read and wrote about maternal impression, too. The author of <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcomecollection.org\/works\/sw68jftr\/items\"><em>The Midwives\u2019 Book<\/em><\/a> (1671), usually identified as English midwife Jane Sharp, wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Sometimes the mother is frighted or conceives wonders, or longs strangely for things not to be had, and the child is markt accordingly by it\u2026 Since the child takes part of the mother\u2019s life whilst he is in the womb, as the fruit doth of the tree, whatsoever moves the faculties of the mother\u2019s soul may do the like in the child\u2026 so Strawberries or Mulberries or the like be fashioned upon them.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-2\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-2\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cMan-midwives,\u201d who increasingly began delivering babies in the eighteenth century, also urged women to regulate their minds to avoid having negative influences on their offspring. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/femalephysicianc00maub\/page\/n3\/mode\/2up\">Scottish man-midwife John Maubray<\/a> blamed disabilities and facial differences on \u201cthe imagination of the mother while she either conceives such shapeless phantasies in her mind, or while she frequently and intently fixes her eyes upon such deform\u2019d persons or disagreeable objects.\u201d If a pregnant woman was startled by an animal or if \u201can apple, pear, plum, [or] cherry fall upon any part of her body,\u201d he warned, \u201cthe mark of the thing\u201d would be \u201cinstantly imprinted\u201d on her fetus. If she touched her face in fright, she should \u201cmove her hand to some more remote, private, or convenient place of the body\u201d so the birthmark would be \u201caverted or at least stamped upon the other part touch\u2019d.\u201d Because facial birthmarks were more visible and stigmatizing, it was up to the pregnant woman to try to relocate her child\u2019s birthmark elsewhere!<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-3\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-3\">[4]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The eighteenth century saw a series of debates over maternal impression in Europe, with some skeptical physicians challenging the widespread belief that mothers marked their unborn children in the womb while other medical writers continued to accept the theory. In his 1714 <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcomecollection.org\/works\/xrtfjr7t\/items\">treatise on skin diseases<\/a>, English physician Daniel Turner inadvertently provided a prime example of how maternal impression placed blame on women. He described how he had admonished his pregnant \u201ckinswoman\u201d for wearing <a href=\"https:\/\/dmda.york.ac.uk\/the-patch-room\/patch-02\/\">beauty mark patches<\/a>, a popular fashion accessory, warning her she would mark her future child with a \u201cgreat black spot\u201d on its face. His words created an \u201capprehension\u201d in the woman\u2019s mind, he noted. In his book, Turner blamed her actions during pregnancy for the facial birthmark with which her daughter was eventually born.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-4\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-4\">[5]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> In <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcomecollection.org\/works\/j56kepdu\/items\">a response to Turner\u2019s 1714 treatise<\/a>, physician James Augustus Blondel criticized maternal impression as \u201ca vulgar error.\u201d He called it \u201cscandalous and provoking\u201d to suppose that tender and loving mothers could \u201cbreed monsters by the wantonness of their imagination.\u201d Turner and Blondel sparred for over a decade in a pamphlet war, which partly weakened the theory.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-5\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-5\">[6]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Yet belief in the destructive power of pregnant women\u2019s imaginations persisted, particularly in the United States.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-6\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-6\">[7]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> In the 1890s, U.S. physicians heatedly debated the theory of maternal impression in medical journals. \u201cWhen we see a child upon whose person there is a <em>naevus<\/em> bearing some resemblance to a fruit or a flower, which the mother tells us she had longed for during her pregnancy, we may doubt,\u201d acknowledged one physician. Yet, he wrote, \u201cI myself have seen what the mothers have told me were dried peaches, strawberries, raspberries, port-wine stains, and a variety of other objects.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-7\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-7\">[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Women clearly sought explanations for their children\u2019s birthmarks through beliefs about maternal impression and shared them with doctors. Physicians, in turn, contributed to their fears. \u201cI, for one, never fail to warn my pregnant patients to be careful what they look at,\u201d one doctor wrote ominously.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-8\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-8\">[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>During the Progressive Era, some Americans blended the theory of maternal impression with the dangerous science of eugenics, whose advocates sought to encourage the birth of \u201cfitter\u201d children and stem the reproduction of \u201cunfit\u201d people.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-9\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-9\">[10]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> \u201cThe mother is the architect of her child,\u201d declared eugenicist Thomas W. Shannon in <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uiug.30112088480105&amp;seq=7\"><em>Heredity Explained<\/em><\/a> (1913). He wrote that birthmarks and birth defects could be prevented if a pregnant woman kept her thoughts clear and untroubled.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-10\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-10\">[11]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> C.J. Bayer, author of <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/maternalimpress00bayegoog\/page\/n6\/mode\/2up?ref=ol\"><em>Maternal Impressions<\/em><\/a> (1897), surely terrified his readers by telling them that \u201cthe mind of a mother, by a mental operation\u201d had \u201cdisarranged the atoms of flesh and bone\u201d in many a child, causing \u201cso-called birthmarks\u201d and \u201chuman monstrosities.\u201d For Bayer, \u201cthe blind, the deaf, and the malformed\u201d and \u201cthe feebleminded\u201d were all \u201cill-born\u201d due to negligent mothers who failed to regulate their minds.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-11\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-11\">[12]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_35782\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35782\" style=\"width: 405px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35782\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-25-at-8.24.31-AM.png?resize=405%2C284&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"The title page of the book with an illustration page that is detatched from the binding showing a white-skinned angel watching over two chubby white toddlers.\" width=\"405\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-25-at-8.24.31-AM.png?resize=405%2C284&amp;ssl=1 405w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-25-at-8.24.31-AM.png?resize=723%2C507&amp;ssl=1 723w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-25-at-8.24.31-AM.png?resize=768%2C539&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-25-at-8.24.31-AM.png?w=790&amp;ssl=1 790w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35782\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Interior of T.W. Shannon\u2019s <em>Eugenics<\/em> from 1916. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worthpoint.com\/worthopedia\/1916-edition-eugenics-nazi-heredity-439113133\">Worth Point<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A myth, once lodged in our cultural imagination, is difficult to dislodge. Only gradually in the mid-twentieth century did maternal impression theory begin to fall into disrepute in the U.S.. Maternity guides refuted the idea that pregnant women\u2019s imaginations could mark their fetuses, while lamenting that it remained widespread.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-12\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-12\">[13]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Yet misinformation about birthmarks continues to circulate today. \u201cBirthmark meaning\u201d and \u201cbirthmark spiritual meaning\u201d are among the most popular Google search terms related to birthmarks. People still seek to assign some greater meaning to birthmarks. Similarly, a recent medical textbook about treating infants with birthmarks advises physicians to make a special effort when talking with the child\u2019s family \u201cto dispel blame and the preconceived notion that the mother\u2019s behavior or thoughts during pregnancy could have caused\u201d the birthmark.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35776-footnote-ref-13\" href=\"#post-35776-footnote-13\">[14]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Myths about birthmarks have proven particularly persistent because we still do not fully understand their causes.<\/p>\n<p>Wherever medical uncertainty and complexity exist, people demonstrate a dangerous tendency to look for simplistic answers and scapegoat mothers. In September 2025, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/shots-health-news\/2025\/09\/22\/nx-s1-5550153\/trump-rfk-autism-tylenol-leucovorin-pregnancy\">held a press conference<\/a> to announce that fetal and early childhood exposure to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, causes autism. Yet there is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aap.org\/en\/news-room\/fact-checked\/acetaminophen-is-safe-for-children-when-taken-as-directed-no-link-to-autism\/?srsltid=AfmBOorqkpRmAT_ozfNesEzGN7A2DVdG3jv0DS0Hp8nU5ltFU_S9ohGZ\">no evidence<\/a> of a direct causal link between acetaminophen and autism. Decades of research have instead linked autism to <a href=\"https:\/\/nam.edu\/news-and-insights\/autism-tylenol-acetaminophen-pregnancy\/\">over a hundred different genes<\/a>. Moreover, as medical professionals <a href=\"https:\/\/ysph.yale.edu\/news-article\/what-the-research-says-about-autism-and-tylenol-use-during-pregnancy\/\">quickly clarified<\/a>, Tylenol is one of very few pain relievers approved for pregnant women to use and it reduces fevers, which can be dangerous if left untreated. There is no magic bullet for preventing autism and no reason to increase the anxieties of pregnant women or parents.<\/p>\n<p>Myths of maternal responsibility have historically caused people to blame mothers, and they have also led mothers to blame themselves. As we have seen, medical practitioners who wrote about birthmarks used their patients\u2019 stories as evidence of the theory of maternal impression. Sadly, the women who provided these stories to doctors had likely searched their memories for the triggering incident, the persistent craving, or the intrusive thought that led them to \u201cmark\u201d their child. Searching for answers, they interpreted their children\u2019s differences using the widespread but baseless theory of maternal impression. Their stories show all too clearly the harms caused by myths of maternal responsibility.<\/p>\n<section id=\"sources\">\n<h4>Notes<\/h4>\n<ol>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-0\">Theresa Vaughan, <em>Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humors<\/em> (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 81-6. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-0\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-1\">Rebecca Wilkin, \u201cEssaying the Mechanical Hypothesis: Descartes, La Forge, and Malebranche on the Formation of Birthmarks,\u201d <em>Early Science and Medicine<\/em> 13, no. 6 (2008): 533-67. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-1\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-2\">Jane Sharp, <em>The Midwives\u2019 Book<\/em> (London, 1671), 111-122. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-2\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-3\">John Maubray, <em>The Female Physician<\/em> (London, 1724), 62-9. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-3\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-4\">Daniel Turner, <em>De Morbis Cutaneis: A Treatise of Diseases Incident to the Skin<\/em> (London, 1723), 155-186. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-4\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-5\">Julia Epstein, \u201cThe Pregnant Imagination, Women\u2019s Bodies, and Fetal Rights,\u201d in <em>Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865<\/em> (University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 111-137. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-5\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-6\">For the longevity of maternal impression in the U.S., see Karen Weingarten, \u201cFrom Maternal Impressions to Eugenics: Pregnancy and Inheritance in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.,\u201d <em>Journal of Medical Humanities<\/em> 43 (2022): 303-317; Miriam Rich, \u201cConceiving Monsters: Women, Knowledge, and Anomalous Births in the Nineteenth-Century United States,\u201d <em>Bulletin of the History of Medicine<\/em> 99, no. 2 (2025): 316-346. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-6\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-7\">C.H. Maston, \u201cMaternal Impressions,\u201d <em>Medical News<\/em>, April 2, 1898. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-7\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-8\">H.B. Lee, \u201cMaternal Impressions,\u201d <em>Medical Record<\/em>, October 24, 1891. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-8\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-9\">Weingarten, \u201cFrom Maternal Impression to Eugenics.\u201d <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-9\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-10\">Thomas W. Shannon, <em>Heredity Explained<\/em> (Marietta, OH, 1913), 104-116. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-10\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-11\">C.J. Bayer, <em>Maternal Impressions<\/em> (Winona, MN, 1897), 12-15, 140-7. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-11\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-12\">See, for example, Arthur Dean, \u201cYour Boy and Girl: Common Myths Blasted,\u201d <em>Pasadena Star-News<\/em>, February 1, 1933. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-12\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35776-footnote-13\">John Mulliken and Joyce Bischoff, \u201cPathogenesis of Infantile Hemangioma,\u201d in <em>Mulliken and Young\u2019s Vascular Anomalies<\/em>, 43-67. <a href=\"#post-35776-footnote-ref-13\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Feature image caption: <em>The midwives book. Or the whole art of midwifery discovered. <\/em> by Jane Sharp. (<a href=\"https:\/\/wellcomecollection.org\/works\/sw68jftr\/items?canvas=55\">Wellcome Collection<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<p><!-- MOLONGUI AUTHORSHIP PLUGIN 5.1.0 --><br \/>\n<!-- https:\/\/www.molongui.com\/wordpress-plugin-post-authors --><\/p>\n<div class=\"m-a-box \" data-box-layout=\"slim\" data-box-position=\"below\" data-multiauthor=\"false\" data-author-id=\"637\" data-author-type=\"user\" data-author-archived=\"\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-container\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-tab m-a-box-content m-a-box-profile\" data-profile-layout=\"layout-1\" data-author-ref=\"user-637\" itemscope=\"\" itemid=\"https:\/\/nursingclio.org\/author\/hannah-katherine-hicks\/\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/Person\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-content-middle\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-item m-a-box-avatar\" data-source=\"local\"><a class=\"m-a-box-avatar-url\" href=\"https:\/\/nursingclio.org\/author\/hannah-katherine-hicks\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"90\" height=\"90\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?fit=90%2C90&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-90x90 size-90x90\" alt=\"NC logo in blakc\" itemprop=\"image\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?resize=405%2C405&amp;ssl=1 405w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Untitled-design.png?resize=181%2C181&amp;ssl=1 181w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 90px) 100vw, 90px\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"m-a-box-item m-a-box-data\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-bio\" itemprop=\"description\">\n<p>Hannah Katherine Hicks is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University&#8217;s Richards Civil War Era Center and holds a PhD in History from Vanderbilt University. She is currently completing a book about women and criminal courts in the post-Civil War U.S. South. Her work has appeared in *the Bulletin of the History of Medicine* and *Women&#8217;s History Review.*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-border-color\" style=\"border-style:none;border-width:0px;margin-top:32px;margin-bottom:32px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" style=\"margin-bottom:24px\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" style=\"margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:10px\">Discover more from Nursing Clio<\/h3>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px;font-size:15px\">Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility \u201cYou ate a lot of strawberries when you were pregnant with that baby, didn\u2019t you?\u201d When I was a child, my mother heard this exasperating refrain from complete strangers. Shortly after I was born, I developed a large vascular birthmark, an infantile hemangioma, on my face. Because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[155555,15852,5801,28374,12671,15851,14929],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-329243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-birthmarks","tag-clio","tag-historical","tag-maternal","tag-myths","tag-nursing","tag-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility \u2013 Nursing Clio - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329243\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility \u2013 Nursing Clio - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility \u201cYou ate a lot of strawberries when you were pregnant with that baby, didn\u2019t you?\u201d When I was a child, my mother heard this exasperating refrain from complete strangers. Shortly after I was born, I developed a large vascular birthmark, an infantile hemangioma, on my face. 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