Parenting in the past - what were they thinking?!

[maGicGift]

For example... alcohol in baby's bottle to help him sleep, leaving baby in the back garden/front porch for nap time (so parents can't here him cry) feeding baby condensed milk in a bottle instead of formula.

It's amazing how advise changes so quickly - do you have any more funny/strange past parenting stories? Those above were from my Mum/Gran

In the 80s when I had my DS he was out in his pram everyday,not so I could forget about him and ignore him but to give him some fresh ai.Also my neice was fed on evaporated milk(not condensed) and is now 5ft 10in with a model figure,she was actually approached in selfriges by a model scout(politely refused).I know lots of young mothers whose children are never out the house except to go to the baby clinic and are ignored in the house because mums watching telly.

My mum and my grandma both had jobs.

Just thought I'd mention that. They don't see a mother having a job as some new-fangled thing.

at the baby cage. DD3 at 4 months was mobile and small enough to squeeze out through the gaps between cage and building...

*LyingWitchInTheWardrobe Thu 05-May-11 15:12:40
I'm sure parents of the past would be quite horrified at the parents of today...

Going out to work, giving childcare to strangers.... buying and feeding shop bought meals to their families... broken families... latchkey kids... violence and vandalism perpetrated by kids.... absent parents... drunk/drugged parents and children... bad behaviour in schools... lack of discipline and manners... treating PILs/GPs and other family members as 'disposable' unless they want something... and some spending all day chatting on a computer instead of 'doing stuff' with their kids.*

Unfortuantely all the above was normal 150 odd years ago. So times change but the social structure that we know today wasn't invented until post WWI and really embedded after WWII. Women (other than wives of established merchants or atristocracy) always worked until the 1950's. The term 'houe wife' is a very 1950's iconic term.

Moving back in time, with no sanitation until the Victorian engineering boom - sanitation was lax -the fluid drink was ale - no tea as a norm - it was an expensive commodity. Go google 'Gin mothers' and look at now published documentation of the lower echelons drinking habits. And we wont go into the fact that opiates were legal and Queen Victoria had an opium habit which saw her through repeated childbirth

Broken families - if you are into geneology - you will find it is quite normal pre WWI for cough an awful ot of 6 month pregnanies. Marriage only became vogue in the lower classes post WWI when the educated officers realised that their cannon fodder were being killed in their masses and 'wives' were going to be left without war pensions.

Step families - with the level of disease prior to vaccinations - almost every child at some stage was in a step family....add into that a dead father due to war, a mother dead in childbirth.

As for discipline in schools and dysfunctional behaviour - all your ADHDs and Austistcs would have been in a "mental home" - Bedlam - viewed as Sunday entertainment for a farthing ..... your physically obviously disabled births would have been quietly smothered by the midwife .... probably as you had laudnum administered.

PND? off to the nuthouse with you!

My friend's grandmother was born in the 1920's very premature and weighing under 2lb. She was kept swaddled in a box in the oven on a very low heat, and had whisky rubbed into her skin every day. She is now 89 and fit as a fiddle. I love that story!

sits on her hands at the mention of gf

The baby cage is hilarious... but what else do you do really living in a high-rise in the city. We live on the third floor of a condo and have a balcony which I guess could be considered a posh 'cage'... DD is in and out all day long. At our last flat, I most certainly put her outside on the deck in her stroller for naps when I wasn't walking to the store... fresh air is good.

Growing up we had a Chevy Van, so not even a seat for my sisters and me; just a bed in the back to lay on! Dad also would drink his canned beer and drive all the time and when it became illegal, he had a Pepsi plastic reusable wrap thing to go around the can so it wouldn't look like a beer can!

Mom starting me on solids at three months; first food was mash potatoes and pureed steak.

thing is our kids will scoff,organic veg,home made puree.what the hell were you thinking dont you know that fresh stuff is like poison/you never fed me super noodles

at your grandmother being kept in the oven Mrslevinson!!!

Hope it wasn't a gas oven!!!

"Childhood was just something you had to put up with until kids were old enough to work and bring a wage into the household." Don't recall who said that here but

Sorry, your friend's grandmother!!

In answer to OP, I'm sure our kids will look back and think the same.

My mum said when I was a baby, the HV would pop round and they would both have a fag with me on the carpet in front of them.

I was going to say, MrsLevinson, I bet they really had to make sure the pilot light was working. It would be funny if she ended up being Chef.
It does make perfect sense though... I do more baking in the winter because the oven heats up the place better than the base board heating, and you get cookies.

Thats true enough - my brother was a 6 1/2 month baby - he was covered in olive oil, wrapped in tin foil and placed on the shelf over the rayburn.

6' 4" and nearly 60 now

My grandma was pretty busy with 3 kids and 2 jobs so she sent my dad (age 4) up to Scotland for the weekend with some lorry drivers that came into her cafe. It's a much loved family story.

i don't know. my mother is still keen on covering everything she gives my kids in sugar and butter (apparently "vitamins dont' get absorbed without fat?!!!" no wonder my DDs start looking chubby after my mother looks after htem for a week!!). the fresh air is definitely a massive obsession- i remember having to stay out for three hours with my younger sister (in pram) in 20 degrees below zero, because it was "good for her". they gave babies, from 3 months, lots of undiluted freshly squeezed fruit juice to drink - that was the start of weaning. oh, and most importantly, you would never ever take your baby/young child anywhere, ever, because of all the germs!!
not sure if my mother is a particularly weird one but you know....we survived, all three of us, she raised us on her own, and we are all, touch wood, very healthy and decently functioning adults!!! baffles me every time. :)

allag - it's true that we need some fat in our diet as some vitamins are only fat soluble. We also need fats for cell membranes and energy etc. But not too much, particularly saturated fats

FWIW - I have relatives in Norway who also ensure children get daily frsh air even when it's well below zero. Canadian kids are the same - they go out in bitter weather.

The British Journal of Nursing Archives provide an invaluable and amusing insight into the advice doled out in the past.

Here's a page from 1930 "Baby Feeding - When Natures Method Cannot Be Followed"
www.rcn.org.uk/development/rcn_archives/historical_nursing_journals/keyword_search_journals?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHAlM0ElMkYlMkZyY25hcmNoaXZlLnJjbi5vcmcudWslMkZkYXRhJTJGVk9MVU1FMDc4LTE5MzAlMkZwYWdlMTQzLXZvbHVtZTc4LWp1bmUxOTMwLnBkZiZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D

GASP! Apparently you're meant to make up your own 'formula' using cows milk, sugar, orange juice and cod liver oil.

Was that to make sure his skin was extra crispy troisgarcons!!!

My grandmother was a premmie, and could fit in a pint glass when she was born.

Social Services would be round so quickly that their tyres would smoke if they got a call today about somebody sitting in a pub with a premmie baby in a pint glass laughing about it with their friends.

I wondered the same about the gas oven.

Ninedragons, I probably shouldn't laugh but I did, what an image!

I know, it's appalling, isn't it? I laughed when my dad told me, and then thought hmm, the only way you would know that would be to have tried it....

My parents had a rickety little Daihatsu van and used to pile around 10 kid in it (me, my DB and friends) to take us swimming. Complete death trap. Also the smoking. As 1944girl said, the smoking also. My mum said everyone smoked on the maternity ward whilst holding their newborns. Can you imagine!!

Apparently I was a very sicky baby. No bloody wonder given that I was fed on cow's milk mixed with cod liver oil [vomit].

I suffered horrendously as a child with chest infection after chest infection which has impacted on my health as an adult also. I used to miss exams at school through coughing. Apparently I had a "weak chest". I often wonder to what extent my weak chest was caused by my poor early diet and being smoked upon as a child.