Did children of the 70s/80s go to baby groups?

[summertime232]

It feels like there’s so much pressure these days to entertain your kids, taking them to baby groups and classes and putting on lots of fun, stimulating and educational activities, followed by the obligatory photos on social media.

Has it always been like this for mums or were babies in the “old” days (by which I’m talking 1970s, 80s or even 90s, so not that long ago!) left to their own devices more?

I’m just curious because I feel pressurised to be filling my toddler’s days with wonderful experiences and know I’m falling short.

I’m also struggling to find other mums to bond with. I never joined an antenatal group (regret that now) and feel like everything is so regimented at these groups that it’s hard to get chatting - again, a lot of that is probably due to the pandemic. I’m also quite shy and reserved so not the best at talking to others. My child also tends to be the one that screams and cries their way through baby groups, which I find hard!

Yes there were definitely mum and toddler groups that I and my brother went to in the late 70s / early 80s. My mum was involved in running one at one point.
In the 2000s when I had my kids there were sure start centres, but a lot of those closed down from 2010 unfortunately.
Mums stuck at home have always needed a chance to meet other mums and not everyone lives close to family with kids of similar ages.

I think my mum took me to mum & baby swimming, but it was just a bobbing around in the learner pool sort of thing, not the £15/lesson plus extortionate photoshoots Water Babies type setup. And the local NCT (of which she ended up as branch chair) hosted coffee mornings in a few mums' houses on a rotating basis. Then village/church hall playgroups when I was a bit older. That said, I have taken my mum along to a few things like Baby Sensory, forest school etc, and she has loved watching my DC there, but it just wasn't around in the 80s.

We did used to have a lovely local village hall playgroup pre-pandemic but it's closed and is unlikely to reopen as the volunteers have all moved on.

I went to a playground in the late 70s in a church. I only remember because they use to hold up our kiddie tables with adults chairs.

New kids to the group would nearly always try to pull out one of the adult chairs, and depending on the child would ignore the rest of us telling them not to do it. The tables only completely collapsed once when an adult couldn't get to the new child in time to stop them....

One of my SILs went to a baby and toddler group in the 90s as she met one of her long term friends there. The friend is infact another one of my SILs cousin's though no-one worked that out for a few years. The group was held at a church.

I just went places with my mum, no baby groups. We had pets I played with, she did stuff round the house. Went to grandparents.

Ime:
70’s no
80’s no
90’s just starting

It's largely Covid that's why you can't find any of the cheap, informal church hall groups, though I'm not sure if some of them are ever coming back. They were around in 2018 when I had my first. The problem is that they were run by volunteers, often older women, and whereas the people running for-profit groups were desperate to reopen because it's their livelihood, volunteers are understandably not willing to take on the risk of operating in a pandemic or all the extra work with risk assessments etc. Anecdotally I've also spoken to a lot of older women who did huge amounts of volunteering before covid but who found stopping it all very liberating and who are reluctant to go back to doing things like running play groups - which I think is sad for the community but good for them!

No I don't think so. Mine didn't (now 30 and 33), except for playgroup a couple of hours once or twice a week. There wasn't anything like what is laid on nowadays. I know there was a mother and toddler group one session a week at a local church but no baby yoga, baby music or whatever. However we did music and singing at home, not the same of course.

(There was no tummy time either :-) )

I had my children in the 80s but was back at work when they were 3/4 months old ( as was common in those days) so didn’t do those groups if indeed they existed .
DD has just started going to a baby group with DGD. DD has PNA so it is helping her .

I went to a playgroup in a church hall in the 70s.

I was a seventies baby. I can remember lots of coffee mornings with other Mums and kids, but I don't remember going to any baby groups with my Mum and little brother. I went to play school in the church hall. There was no soft play or anything like that, we used to go to the playground a lot.

Yes! 1970s playgroups in church halls.
Not for profit unlike today’s groups.

Squash, biscuits, lots of toys, songs and dancing. All the Mums chatting to each other.

No baby massage, baby gym, baby and mum exercise, baby music etc.

I also went to a nursery when my Mum went back to work. It was council run.

I was never taken to anything like that. Such groups did exist but were mostly only for the wealthier middle classes. Working class people tended to socialise more with neighbours than nowadays.

Yes in the church hall and then later to playgroup (mornings) in the community centre.

I’m struggling to find anything like that in my area - everything seems to be geared towards signing up to a load of classes at once and suchlike. I’m sure it’s partly due to Covid, but I wish there was something more laid back like the experiences described above.

Try church groups.
You don’t need to be a member of the church to go in my experience.

Mid 80s, I took mine to toddler groups, one at the village hall, one at the church hall. Then at just under three years old, they spent two to three mornings a week at playgroup. Parents had to help occasionally on a rota basis, but it was run by two or three paid staff.

I took my DC to a playgroup in a church hall in the mid 90s, it was the highlight of our week because I made good friends there. There was play for the toddlers, a messy activity or craft, orange squash and a biscuit for the kids, coffee or tea for the mums and we'd finish with a singalong. We'd make an effort to include anyone new or on their own. We'd take turns to wash up and put away the toys at the end. It was lovely, and only a couple of quid per session.

There was a physical activity group called Bumps and Babes. I took DS there once but it wasn't our thing. Ditto a music group. I preferred our little playgroups and then playdates with individual mums I met there.

No social media then of course. I look back on it as a very special time.

Perhaps I’m on a bit of a downer, but back then generally sounded like simpler times!

I was a baby in the late 70s / early 80s. Mum says that toddler group from about 12-18 months was the only 'baby group' as such. It was a simple affair in the village hall - no structured activities, just a few toys to play with whilst the mums had a chat over a cup of tea and a biscuit.
For younger babies, you might have met other mums at the baby (weighing) clinic and possibly invited one or two back to your house for a coffee (but going out to a cafe for a coffee or lunch wasn't really a thing back then).
Definitely no structured baby / toddler / preschool activities. Extra curricular stuff didn't really start until school age (ballet was probably the activity that took the youngest children at about 3-4). You had to be 6 to start swimming lessons!

I went to the same toddler groups that I took my children to. We also had tumble tots and some sort of toddler / parent craft group. The kids were in one room doing a craft and the Mums in another. My Mum made us some lovely things at that group.

Seventies baby here. I went to creche at 18 months but that was more childcare. There must have been some sort of mothers group though as the Baby Sitting Circle came from it. The Baby Sitting Circle with the tokens was everything - and my parents seemed to know half the town through it. Also there was some link to the NCT as one of the BSC mothers was involved in that (her obit was in the magazine when my DC were tiny) and also I remember being driven around by one of the BSC ladies when she was "doing the milk round" as she called it, collecting breast milk and then delivering it to the hospital. This must have been 1977-78.

That sounds lovely @DramaAlpaca, especially this bit:

We'd make an effort to include anyone new or on their own.

I’m really struggling to meet anyone!

Im a 70s baby. I went to playgroup in the church hall and my younger sister went to a toddler group which I assume I went to as well.

I used to take my two younger DC to a toddler group run by the church, I loved the informal set up and a cup of tea being made for you by the volunteers. I found the SureStart ones a bit more structured and I wasn't keen on them. We didn't ever do any of those 'mummy and me' type classes as I'm not really sure what kids get out of them

Toddler group from 2 once a week, playschool from 3.5 (year before starting school) but nothing more