I am pleased to have Kate Kelly from America Comes Alive! as a guest poster here on Acting Balanced today! I loved reading these tidbits:
Five Stories about Parenting Gleaned
from America’s Past
By Kate Kelly, America
Comes Alive!
In honor of
Mother’s Day, here are some stories from America’s past to remind us all how
much motherhood and parenting has changed throughout the years! Raising children “by the book” started early
in the 20th century when sociologists began studying regular people
and purporting that “science” could lead to many improvements—from better house
cleaning methods to better ways of childrearing. Here are five stories to make you smile or
shake your head:
1. In 1933 Norman Rockwell provided the Saturday Evening Post with a cover
illustration featuring a mother with a child over her knee and “child
psychology” book in hand, reading the instructions on spanking.
2. In 1936 an ad in Good Housekeeping for Lysol featured this headline above a photo of
a sick child in bed:
“Madam,
you are to blame!” The ad continues:
“She’d have given her right hand to keep her baby well…yet that very hand may
have caused the illness. The ad noted that the mother kept a clean house, but
because she did not use Lysol, it was not “hospital clean.”
3. The government stepped in to advise
parents. Many states produced handouts with
a recommended daily schedule. One
handout produced by the Minnesota Department of Health recommended a “sun bath
during the morning” and that the entire day should be spent outside---naps
should be taken in the sun if the weather permitted. This was long before the invention of sun
block!
4. In 1945 a woman and her baby were
released from a hospital in Los Angeles with very specific feeding
instructions: “Feed the baby and burp her.”
Upon arriving home, she gave the baby her first bottle and promptly
brought up the anticipated air bubble.
After a second bottle a little later, the mother patted, then pounded a
little harder, and after 30 minutes, she called the doctor to ask how long she
should burp the baby. The doctor asked,
“How long have you been trying?” “Thirty
minutes,” the mother replied. The doctor’s answer: “Stop and put that baby
down. Use some common sense.”
5. In her book, Perfect Motherhood, Rima D. Apple tells a wonderful story from
Hollywood about a scene in a 1939 film Bachelor
Mother, starring Ginger Rogers and David Niven. In a Hollywood-esque series of plot twists,
Rogers, a single woman and sales clerk, becomes caretaker of an infant. David Niven is the son of the store owner and
stops in to check on how Rogers, in whom he is interested romantically, is
doing with the baby. When he arrives
Rogers is feeding the baby, and Niven inquires how she knows she is doing it
correctly. Rogers notes that it is not complicated. She puts the food on the
spoon, puts the spoon in the baby’s mouth, and the baby swallows it. Niven grabs a childcare manual to verify that
this is proper…he soon reads that the doctor “with twenty years experience”
notes that Rogers is doing it wrong, that the food is to be rubbed into the child’s
navel.
Reflecting the spirit of the day, Rogers is clearly torn: The experts should know---but on the other hand, the baby had been happily eating. She takes the book from Niven’s hands and reads the section herself—only to discover that several of the pages were stuck together, and the “rubbing into the navel” treatment actually involved warm oil and was a treatment for colic. She went back to her own method of feeding the baby.
As early as the
1920s, a young mother is quoted as saying, “I try to do just what you
[parenting authorities of the day] say, but I am a nervous wreck just trying to
be calm.”
The Arrival of Dr. Spock
Dr. Benjamin
Spock (1903-1998) whose book, Baby and
Child Care, was published in 1946 was particularly well-received because
his message started with the idea that mothers should trust their instincts:
“you know more than you think you do.”
While each
generation has its parenting gurus (more recently, Penelope Leach and T. Berry
Brazelton as well as numerous experts expounding on how to “raise a gifted
child,” “help a child with ADD,” or “toilet train in seven days,” they are just
part of a long line of experts that have been advising parents for at least the
last 100 years.
As Amy Chua’s
book, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” climbs today’s best seller lists,
it’s probably wise to remember Dr. Spock and his belief in parental instinct: “Don't
be afraid to love [your baby]. . . . Every baby needs to be smiled at, talked
to, played with, fondled -- gently and lovingly. . . . You may hear people say
that you have to get your baby strictly regulated in his feeding, sleeping,
bowel movements and other habits -- but don't believe this. He doesn't have to
be sternly trained. . . . Be natural and comfortable and enjoy your baby."
The same could
be applied to raising children of any age!
If you have
thoughts on how parenting has changed, write me: kate@americacomesalive.com
Happy Mother’s
Day!
To read more about America’s past, please visit
www.americacomesalive.com,
or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AmericaComesAlive. Kate’s website is also a wonderful resource
for parents and families, providing little-known stories of America’s past and
information for sharing our rich heritage with children, so be sure to check it
out!
