There was considerable concern over the safety of mother and child in birth.E. Ewen, "The early modern family" in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), , p. 277. Although childbirth was a predominantly female event, with neighbours and midwives in support, the father was often present in or near the birthing chamber to assert, or in the cases of birth outside marriage to admit, his paternity.M. Hollander, "The name of the Father": baptism and the social construction of fatherhood in early modern Edinburgh", in E. Ewan and J. Nugent, eds, Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), , p. 66. Before the Reformation, baptism was a means of creating wider spiritual kinship with godparents,Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 278. but in the reformed Kirk, godparents were abolished and the baptismal ceremony was used primarily as a means of strengthening the "natural" relationship of the child with the parents and to define their roles. This was particularly focused on the father, who would have the primary responsibility for the moral and spiritual education of the child.Hollander, "The name of the Father", p. 68. Among the elite of Highland society, there existed a system of fosterage that created similar links to godparenthood, with children being sent to the households of other major families to facilitate the creation of mutual bonds, that often endured into later life.
