Despite centuries of stigma, babywearing survives as a marginalized practice turned into a trend

27 Aug 2025

For centuries, Indigenous communities in the Philippines and around the world have used baby carriers and slings to help them care for and raise their babies. The last two decades have seen a surge in popularity for their use, now called babywearing. Babywearing has grown in popularity with more parents, regardless of their heritage, jumping onto the trend for various reasons, whether for convenience or promoting attachment between them and their children.

Perceptions persist that babywearing is an “exotic” and indulgent practice, at times even dangerous, that hampers children’s independence, and by extension, development. Considering the resurgence in the practice’s popularity in the Philippines and globally, this research investigates how, despite centuries of stigma, the practice’s survival points to everyday acts of agency at a moment when traditional practices turn into trends decontextualized from their once othered roots.

Few studies have examined the practice’s history, how its use shaped ideas of childcare, and how these ideas came to play in the country’s colonial-making. This study, the first of its kind in the Philippines, explored how colonial photographs and accounts of babywearing in the Cordillera region figured in the larger Imperial agenda.

Author: Ma. Paula Luz M. Pamintuan-Riva (Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio)

Read the full paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17585716.2025.2471139

Photo: Three boys nursing small children. Peoples of South-East Asia ’(Barton 1912). From the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences МАЭ-RAS Collection И 1124-79.

Despite centuries of stigma, babywearing survives as a marginalized practice turned into a trend

For centuries, Indigenous communities in the Philippines and around the world have used baby carriers and slings to help them care for and raise their babies. The last two decades have seen a surge in popularity for their use, now called babywearing. Babywearing has grown in popularity with more parents, regardless of their heritage, jumping onto the trend for various reasons, whether for convenience or promoting attachment between them and their children.

Perceptions persist that babywearing is an “exotic” and indulgent practice, at times even dangerous, that hampers children’s independence, and by extension, development. Considering the resurgence in the practice’s popularity in the Philippines and globally, this research investigates how, despite centuries of stigma, the practice’s survival points to everyday acts of agency at a moment when traditional practices turn into trends decontextualized from their once othered roots.

Few studies have examined the practice’s history, how its use shaped ideas of childcare, and how these ideas came to play in the country’s colonial-making. This study, the first of its kind in the Philippines, explored how colonial photographs and accounts of babywearing in the Cordillera region figured in the larger Imperial agenda.

Author: Ma. Paula Luz M. Pamintuan-Riva (Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio)

Read the full paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17585716.2025.2471139

Photo: Three boys nursing small children. Peoples of South-East Asia ’(Barton 1912). From the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences МАЭ-RAS Collection И 1124-79.