Child-Holding Patterns in Western Art

FINGER, STANLEY. Child-holding Patterns in Western Art. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 267-271. It has been suggested that mothers generally prefer to hold their children close to an area overlying the heart on the left side of the midline and that this phenomenon might be confirmed in works of art as well as in naturalistic observations. Artworks by major European and American artists were examined to test this hypothesis. There was a bias for holding a child on the mother's left side in early Christian art and in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Significant side preferences were not observed in pictures in which children were held by men, or in those depicting mothers nursing their babies.