Baby care in the 60's and 70's

[Zofloraqueen27]

I am a regular lurker on MN and really enjoy reading about how different life is today from when my babies were born. I am a devoted grandma (and to be a great (!) grandma in August).

Having a baby today seems so much more involved now. I am amazed when I read "the baby will only sleep on me", "cluster feeding" and having your baby constantly attached to you with slings.. and what is this "co sleeping"? You brought your baby home from hospital (where most were born) after a four/five restful day stay where babies were taken to a nursery after last 10pm feed to give new mums a nights sleep.

Once home you immediately carried on the feeding regime started in hospital of feeds at 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm. Babies were settled for the night and you hoped they would sleep through to 6am feed. Obviously feeding during the night if the baby woke up, otherwise it was back to the 6am onwards regime. Most babies were bottle fed then.

After feeding, changing and a cuddle babies were put back into their cot to await next feed. Obviously as they grew older and became more awake and interesting they were put into bouncy chairs but otherwise mums would put babies back to sleep. This way babies learned cot means rest/sleep.Cluster feeding was an unknown concept then and generally babies followed four hourly feeds. My health visitor advised me to start giving baby rice or a Farley's Rusk along with bottle feed when the baby got to 10lbs...my sons were all 9.5lbs born so weaning started around six weeks then.

Baby gros were a revelation by the time my second son was born and babies stayed in them day and night until about six months old -easy to wash and no unnecessary dressing babies up (much less laundry) as today. I see tiny babies dressed as mini adults now. It seems mums today have a much harder time of it - never putting a baby down to rest and be quiet, always having to be comforted by carrying around.

We managed with far less baby equipment too - though we did not have the luxury (or expense!) of disposable nappies. The way we raise our children varies from generation to generation following trends and fashions but I have to say it seemed a lot easier when I had mine. I wonder what the trends will be when babies of today become parents and today's mum watch in wonder.

callaird, I didn't realise the point of this thread was to pick apart your career and show you up for the baby hating monster you so obviously are... in all seriousness though, you have no need to justify yourself to the people giving you a hard time. The parents of the children you work with have chosen to instigate a routine, a choice open to all of us, and they've outsourced the implementing of that routine. I have a list of jobs I'd outsource if I could - potty training, ironing, doing homework, cooking.

"These people pay my mortgage and bills."

Oh well that's ok then.

minifingerz, what is your issue? The thread is not about callairds job, it's about parenting in the 60s and 70s, why start making it personal by being deliberately horrid to someone?

There's surely a huge variation in what mothers do in any given decade.

DP's mum and mine are not very different in age. My mum is ever so middle class, finished her PhD, got married, bought a house, joined NCT, and had her babies in her late 20s. She breastfed for at least a year for all her babies, etc. etc.

MIL had her babies between 21 and 25, and is not remotely middle class. She claims to have weaned in the early weeks, is a big advocate of formula, and rubbed whisky on the babies' gums.

Each thinks their advice is still the 'right' way to do it and both of them try to pressure us into doing things the way they did them. But by now, it is pretty obvious that they've got a strong sense of how the way they did things relates to class. And there's a strong unspoken sense, from both of them, that if we do differently from them, we're not just wrong as mothers, we're also shifting out of their perceived class.

In the 60s the woman in the next bed to me got up to settle her crying baby and was told by the staff nurse to leave it to cry or end up with a performing monkey.
I’ve remembered this all these years, the poor young mum was in tears.
When I was feeding my sleepy baby (bottle fed) I was told by the night sister to stop holding my baby in the crook of my
arm close to my body and hold him by the back of the head, my arm outstretched and away from me.
This isn’t the half of it, I had some bloody nightmare 60s experiences.

I was born in the 80s. DM started giving me a quarter of a Rusk at bedtime from the age of 8wks. The HV told her I should be sleeping through and Rusk in my bedtime bottle would help, DM didn't want me to choke so gave it to me in a dish with a spoon rather than in my bottle. I had no carseat because they weren't widely used and I wouldn't fit in one anyway because I was in a spica cast. My cast was changed every 6wks under GA and DM kept getting wrong off the consultant because I was outgrowing them too quickly thanks to the chocolate buttons she kept giving me.

There will always be folk who'll line up to tell rich people what they want to hear, regardless of ethical considerations.

The perceived ethics of callairds job aren't the topic of discussion here. If you care so much about rich people and ethics then go start your own AIBU thread on that subject.

I was born in 1978 and was ff and put on a strict 4 hourly routine very much like the op described. I was a very settled, content babyy apparently.

My brother came along 2 years later and there was no way he would wait 4 hours for a feed!! I think even in the 1970s mums had to respond to babies that screamed all the time.

My dd was mix fed and I instigated a routine as found it was the only way I could stay sane, it wasn't a 4 hourly routine but a routine nonetheless. Ime a routine meant that dd didn't have to 'demand' being fed as that need was already met, likewise she didn't have to scream with over tiredness as she had regular naps.

Three of my four children put themselves into a routine without any promoting from me and by 8wks were going 3-4hrs between feeds and reliably sleeping from around 11pm-6am .

"The perceived ethics of callairds job aren't the topic of discussion here. If you care so much about rich people and ethics then go start your own AIBU thread on that subject."

The subject under discussion is outdated, possibly harmful babycare/parenting practices, which appear to be the stock in trade of many nannies and maternity nurses catering for the most privileged sectors of society.

I have sympathy for ordinary families who rely on routines because of the demands of caring for multiples and other small children. Less so for people with the money to outsource all of the normal things the rest of us have to cope with while caring for a tiny baby.

And you turned it into a personal attack on another poster by poring over her qualifications, calling her unethical, and implying she is out to harm babies.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to my thread - it was lovely to read the responses - even the more forthright ones! I am delighted to read all the views and opinions on childcare now but I can tell you in forty plus years time young mums will have something to say about parenting in the 2010's/20's so think on grandmas of the future! I would just like to close now by saying to all mums (well the vast majority of them) you are doing a great job even if from time you wonder if you are doing the right thing - or was/is all the hard work worth it and I can tell you mostly yes it is.

I had my children in the 90s and there was no co sleeping or keeping baby in the same room as you to sleep. It is fascinating how these things change over time.
I certainly did both of these in the 90s.

And it was only ten years ago they were telling me to give my child baby rice at twelve weeks.

Well when I had my first in 1992 weaning was advised from 3 months, that had changed to 4 months by the time I had my second in 1997 and the WHO has advised 6 months since 2003.

minifingerz Sun 18-Jun-17 14:14:11

"The demise of breastfeeding in the West following the move to almost 100% hospital births is evidence that poor midwifery practice and bad medical advice can have a catatrophic impact on normal, instinctive parenting."

Note that this "demise" (I think you mean "heavy decline") of breast-feeding did not happen in all Western countries: breastfeeding has remained normal in Scandinavia, despite home births being very rare.

I'm doing the breastfeeding, sometimes co-sleeping, baby-wearing, baby led weaning & feeding on demand parenting with my 8 month old dd.

Yes - I've done lots of research, gone to the classes/courses and read the books on parenting styles and this is what sits comfortably with me & I believe there is evidence support these choices (not that I would judge anyone else for making different choices).

But I would be lying if I didn't say that a big part of it for me is that I'm painfully aware that my maternity leave is going to be the longest stretch of time I get to spend with my little girl - ever - and I just want to drink up as much of her and spend as much time bonding with her as I can, before I have to go back to work (and I have to, to pay the mortgage) and pay for someone else to look after her.... that probably shouldn't be one of the biggest factors in determining my parenting approach - but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't.

I can't comment on whether this would have been the same for mothers in the 60's or 70's. But I know it's a huge factor for me and some of my friends.

My mum had three children between the early 70s and early 80s. She can't remember how she fed/ sleep trained etc Her stock phrase is "I don't know really. We just got on with it". She actually laughed out loud when I told her DD was going through a growth spurt or a sleep regression some years ago. She was amused that such things happened and that I apparently knew so definitively that that was what was happening. (Re growth spurts "isn't that just what babies do? Eat more when they're growing?"; re sleep regressions "if she slept well before she will sleep well again. Don't fuss yourself so much!")

PPs have touched on it earlier. Today's mothers are very well informed and there's a lot of information out there. Only 30 or 40 years ago this much information wasn't as readily available so women did just get on with it.

Coupled with increased levels of education of women, women having babies later in life (and often having lived another kind of life before having children), and easy access to the internet, motherhood today is A Thing. Women expect a lot of it, put a lot of energy into it, worry about it a lot. It's more difficult now to "just get on with it" without making a conscious decision to drown out all the advice and information and noise.

It's also my opinion that a lot of research we access now is simply scientific proof of what's been known by womanhood forever. It's just been done by salaried men (mostly) in peer reviewed research papers so therefore counts as gospel now.

My mum and I were watching OBEM last week and she told me that when my brother and I were born, prem twins in late 60s, the first time she held us was when we came home at 6 + 8 weeks!!! No skin to skin etc. She said looking back it was awful but you just did what you were told. Also she was in hospital for months before she had us and had an ashtray by her bedside and friends would bring in drinks!!!!

ladybird69 that's sad isn't it. I had similar, born at 28 wks, put on 4hourly feeds in incubator, not touched by parents til I went home at 6 months, not even visited more than a few times a week. My mother didn't bond with me at all and thought I was a pain in the arse because I screamed all the time and failed to thrive. She was just doing what she was told, but I am very glad things have changed in this area.

Havent read the full thread but whats the point of this?

Child rearing varies by era and culture.

At a Pompeii exhibition I learned that in ancient Roman homes there were no specific rooms for children they simply played and slept in what ever rooms their parents occupied.

In pre historic eras babies most certainly were carried by parents most of the time and co-slept, cots and beds didnt exist.

In some cultures today co sleeping etc isnt a style of parenting it is just parenting and the norm

happily yes thank heavens that things have changed for prem babies and their parents.

I think the whole care of mothers and babies I received in 1970 was appalling. At my first antenatal appointment, the nurse read out from a tick box. One question was Breast of Bottle?. That was it no discussion.

My son was induced at 36 weeks and I was not allowed out of bed for 48 hours because he was a forceps birth. No-one told me how he was. I was in hospital for 10 days, during which time I was only allowed to look at him through a glass window. No doctor ever spoke about him, when I asked they would just say "he is fine". By the time I left hospital I had never been closer to him than 3 feet.

When he was discharcharged, I had only fed him once and changed his nappy once. He was so tiny and struggling to take the bottle and the nurse kept flicking his feet quite hard. I wanted to cry.

Once home the only baby care guidance I had was from a pamphlet. I gave him Cow and Gate formula. He would take an ounce or two then Projectile vomit right accross the room. I took him to the GP, who told me off for giving him Cow And Gate saying he should be on SMA.

I think encouraging mothers to breastfeed was deemed to be too time comsuming for the staff. Producing bottles meant mothers could just be left to get on with it.

I have 8 GKs and have nothing but admiration for the way they are being raised. It is exhausting for the mothers, but any fool can see how much better it is for the babies.

Pollyglot your story made me smile. What a wonderful mummy you sound . I bf coslept baby wear and did blw all because it's what my maternal instinct told me to do ?? I never read a parenting book and just when with my gut instinct

She can't remember how she fed/ sleep trained etcHer stock phrase is "I don't know really. We just got on with it"

I asked DM a similar question about did she had worries she was making the right/wrong parenting choices and she told me "no, we were far too busy raising you all to worry about whether we were doing it right".

That's all very well Vanilla but not all mothers are blessed with maternal instinct. My MIL told me off for looking stuff up in books and said just do what comes naturally. Unfortunately for me I don't have a clue because it didn't come naturally. I didn't know anyone else with babies and although I love DD to bits, I am not in the least bit maternal.