The position of nanny has evolved from the tradition of wet nursing. Originally, a wet nurse was a practical solution for a mother who was unable to nurse, or a means of saving parental anguish in the face of high infant mortality, or considered more desirable than a new mother's care in view of sanitation problems. As wet nursing developed, the nurse attended to her business within the conventions of the cottage craft system. Her services were contracted on the basis of her availability and her reputation. The trade was in babies, not in textiles, but the same principles applied. The nurse remained essentially in control of her own life, and her social connections remained largely undisturbed, for the infant was delivered into her own care. This pattern of wet nursing was common from the seventeenth century until industrialization changed British and Continental living arrangements. The practice of bringing the wet nurse into the employing family's residence and retaining her services for child care as a nanny reflects a microcosm of the factory system in which the work force assembled at a central workplace to promote efficiency and ease of regulation by managing agents. The nanny, or nursery nurse, emerged as a distinct profession in the early decades of the nineteenth century as Great Britain cemented into place its industrially designed class structure. However, the rise of the wet nurse and nanny would scarcely have been possible had not the status of mothers and women declined during the l8th century. Although the employment of nannies largely ended when World War II began, the ideal of providing home-based child care has recently made an astonishing turnabout, mirroring the feminization of the work force. (RH)