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

"I would have liked to had kids 50yrs ago when there was less pressure on women to work."

That's not right. 50 years ago, if you had a rich husband you would have been under pressure to stay home, regardless of how you felt about it. If you were working-class you'd have had to go back to work, like my mum and all the other mums on my street did, just to make ends meet. There was no halcyon era of baby-rearing. They may have been more relaxed about a lot of things but other parts of it were far tougher.

It's always a hoot to look back and laugh at your parents daft ideas. You just wait until you are a grandmother. UP, EC, BLW..........what were they thinking?

Try that is shocking, all of it really.

I often wonder how DH actually survived his childhood. MIL God rest her soul opened a can of peaches and that was their fruit for the week, same for greens and veg. As a baby it was all freezing air, Measel parties, whooping cough, scarlett fever you name it. He was also a carnation milk survivor and they all just lived on tea and biscuits. He was constantly ill as a youth poor little sod.

We used to put early lambs in the oven at home if it was too cold outside. And then again a year or so later at a slightly higher heat...

I do a lot of what my Mum and MIL did, we all turned out pretty well. Babies/toddlers sleep outside if I can at all manage it. All windows of the house opened in the day.

We also had big old station wagons with bench seats and were packed in there like sardines for holidays. My Mum still does that sudden braking/arm flung out to restrain child thing even though we are all strapped in properly now.

DS1 had his first experience riding around a paddock on the back of a ute throwing feed bales out this Easter along with 4 wheel biking, he had a blast. Yes, a bit dangerous but so many things in life are, you might as well enjoy it.

troisgarcons Your brother must have great looking skin!

Sal Canadian here; DD was born in December and I put her outside all the time... bundled up. She was always toasty when she came back inside.

I also remember piling in the back of a pick-up truck and flying down the highway at 80km to spelunking in old fluoride mines with about a dozen other kids and a couple of adults, who looking back now I suspect were on their way to too many beer and clamato juices in the morning. lol

Yes, not sure what is wrong with a baby in a pram in the snow...of course I live in Minnesota and we had snow until a few weeks ago. So it would mean a good six or seven months of no fresh air if we didn't take babes out in the snow! :)

I remember a thread on here complaining about families being out at a Winter festival thing with babies in their prams when it was -6 or something.

What she thought people who live in places like Canada etc did during the winter was beyond me. We had just got back in from a carnival with the newborn and the wind chill was something like -15.

It isn't as though you fling them out onto the ground in a nappy and vest, nothing nicer than being all snuggly and warm when it is cold and snowy.

I was an 80's baby and my step dad had a little green MG car, 2 seater. I travelled everywhere on the parcel shelf, even a 4 hour trip down the motorway for a Cornwall holiday. It was a soft top too, which they considered a good thing as it was a bit more forgiving as I grew bigger and bigger; it would just bulge out at the back! Luckily he was given his parents old car when my sister was born or who knows, maybe they would have shoved her in the boot.

When my oldest brother was born, who's now 50, my mother was told by her (elderly)midwife "to wave the baby over the gas tap" to get it to sleep.

There's one mumsnetter, might be tiktok or lulumama iirc, collects old parenting manuals. I bet there's a whole load of dodgy information in some of them!

There's a great picture of my gran sitting up in her hospital bed holding her newborn baby (my auntie.)
My gran has a fag in her mouth, and she is surrounded by relatives and two nurses - all with fags in their mouths - peering at the baby.

I wonder what we do now which will horrify our great-great-grandchildren!

My Mum gave DS some brandy to soothe him when he was teething

in 2003!

She still uses these old techniques when babysitting and wont be told otherwise, hence we prefer MIL to babysit.

If you were working-class you'd have had to go back to work, like my mum and all the other mums on my street did, just to make ends meet.

not necessarily. My mum and dad were working class and no women we knew ever went to work outside the home. In fact my mum didnt go out to work until about 1980. Every one of my friends had their mum waiting for them at the school gates

well,scheme wean and our mammies worked.we were latch key kids.ime growing up parents worked as they had to

It wasn't condensed milk OP, it was evaporated milk & my DD thrived on it when I struggled to BF (given the lack of support in the 1970s, it's not surprising I failed at it with my first baby).

For teething, my doctor recommended that I buy a small bottle of whisky & put a few drops in her bottle. If that didn't work, I was to drink the rest myself and either way, I'd get some sleep! I think that was tongue-in-cheek advice though.

My DCs would never sleep outside in the garden as they woke up as soon as the pram stopped moving but my HV recommended putting them at the far end of the garden where I couldn't hear them crying.

I was in hospital for a week after DD1 was born - she was brought to me every four hours for feeding and taken to the nursery during the night so I could rest.

naturalbaby, the midwives kept the babies going between their four hourly feeds by giving them dummies and/or water.

Great thread - off to read all the other posts.

scottishmummy - most mums where I lived in 70's worked although sometimes home working such as sewing together pre cut fabric on piece rates. But it was pretty poor working class where I grew up. Jobs the men did were things like bus driver, factory worker, labourer.

In areas that were working class but better paid e.g. miners, far less women worked.

I do remember my mum laughing at baby monitors when they first came out. She couldn't understand why you wanted to listen out for a baby crying. Her view was if you the baby really needed you, you would hear its loud crying anyway. If you couldn't hear any crying, you didn't need to worry about it.

my subjective experience is my mum worked as did pals mums
we all have our respective tales
and my mum worked ft

My granny used to look after me when I was off school. I remember vividly being held over a boiling tar thing when they were mending roads nearby. This was to cure my congested chest. She was only five foot tall and I can still hear her say "Now bide at peace while this sorts ye". I was rigid with fright and had flashbacks for weeks. For all other ills I swear her tattie soup had magical healing properties.

Honey on the dummy!

Yes...Due to a whole other long story, I used to have to look after my baby brother while my mum attended to her small shop she owned. He was no more than 6 weeks old.

If he cried I was told to dip his dummy in honey...1989/1990!