Over a decade before the publication of Emile (1762), a text which played a foundational role in late-eighteenth-century debates about child care practices and spurred a “fundamental transformation in the attitude of parents to children,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau deposited each of his five children by Thérèse Levasseur in a foundling's home, apparently against their mother's wishes. At the heart of the critical debate surrounding Rousseau's actions (the details of which have been rehearsed elsewhere) lie questions regarding his ensuing constructions of motherhood in texts like Emile. As numerous critics have noted, Rousseau became the “most pervasive spokesman” of the late eighteenth century for “natural” maternity, a role for which he was certainly strangely fitted, given his persistent disdain, suspicion, and even horror of the maternal body. “[F]or my own part,” he urged in Emile (in what sounds like a justification for his earlier actions), “I think it is better that the child should suck the breast of a healthy nurse rather than of a petted mother, if he has any further evil to fear from her who has given him birth” (14).