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Well first up, I'm going to apologize in advance for raining on everybody's parade down memory lane.
I was born in the mid 60's. I remember playpens, prams (like the english variety that you push with the baby lying down in it), cribs, these bouncy chair things that you put babies in so they'd lay down strapped into them, basically anything that you could put a moving kid into so they'd stay put and you wouldn't have to pick them up. I know exactly what the OP's talking about.
I'm pretty sure back then the priority for Mums (at least where I was from, which at the time was a little behind the US) was to keep the house spotless and have dinner on the table for Dad when he got home, not to entertain or educate the child.
And Anonchick's right, there were no fancy devices to help out with the housework or entertain people. I don't remember this as a particularly good thing. My poor Grandma (who I spent most of my childhood with, my Mum having to work ridiculous hours - another benefit of the 60's being that women made half as much money as men, and Dad was long gone)
spent the entire Monday (laundry day) putting sheets and towels in the "copper" because there were no washing machines, stirring them with a big stick and then hanging them out on the clothesline, no matter what the weather. It was back breaking.
I was an only child and I don't remember all this in any kind of fond nostalgic way. I was constantly rattling around the place by myself, the adults being so preoccupied with all of the drudgery it took to run the house - there were no cheap books or toys to entertain yourself with, no tv in the daytime, not much attention from anybody. I just remember being lonely a lot and getting into trouble for getting under people's feet while they struggled to get all of the house crap done manually without the mod cons we have now.
And as for the car safety stuff, yeah I guess it was fun, and I've said before that my Mom used her arm as a seatbelt, flinging it out every time she had to brake hard. Which would have been fine, up until the point when we got t boned at an intersection by our house when I was 11, and no amount of maternal arm flinging was going to stop me flying through the windshield.
11 days in the hospital and lots of plastic surgery on my face later, I'm going to go out on a limb and say seat belts are not a bad thing and I wish we'd used them back then. If there had been an infant in that car it would have been killed, without question.
So you bet your arse that these days I'm a sling wearing attention paying let the kid watch tv and play on the internet grateful for car seats and clothes dryers and dishwashers type of Mama. Oh you bet. I wouldn't go back to those days for anything.
I am a baby of the 1960s and my mother recently put all of our old home movies on a DVD. I had not seen most of them in many, many years. As I was watching them recently with my children, it struck me as odd how parents rarely seemed to hold or carry their babies. It seemed like the babies (me, my sisters, cousins....) were always strapped into some sort of a seating device like a stroller, busy seat, high chair... or maybe "loose", but in a play pen. I seldom saw a mom or dad just holding their baby and certainly didn't see anyone with their baby strapped to their body.
Any comments?
I agree though I am a child of the late 70s. It seems the children of the mid 80s and up were the ones to be held a lot either in arms or slings, etc.
To put another spin on your post, I have read that babies born in the 1500s and 1600s were often strapped to boards and wrapped for almost the entire first year of their lives. It was also heavily practiced among the Navajo tribes in America. Can you imagine?
Well first up, I'm going to apologize in advance for raining on everybody's parade down memory lane.
I was born in the mid 60's. I remember playpens, prams (like the english variety that you push with the baby lying down in it), cribs, these bouncy chair things that you put babies in so they'd lay down strapped into them, basically anything that you could put a moving kid into so they'd stay put and you wouldn't have to pick them up. I know exactly what the OP's talking about.
I'm pretty sure back then the priority for Mums (at least where I was from, which at the time was a little behind the US) was to keep the house spotless and have dinner on the table for Dad when he got home, not to entertain or educate the child.
And Anonchick's right, there were no fancy devices to help out with the housework or entertain people. I don't remember this as a particularly good thing. My poor Grandma (who I spent most of my childhood with, my Mum having to work ridiculous hours - another benefit of the 60's being that women made half as much money as men, and Dad was long gone)
spent the entire Monday (laundry day) putting sheets and towels in the "copper" because there were no washing machines, stirring them with a big stick and then hanging them out on the clothesline, no matter what the weather. It was back breaking.
I was an only child and I don't remember all this in any kind of fond nostalgic way. I was constantly rattling around the place by myself, the adults being so preoccupied with all of the drudgery it took to run the house - there were no cheap books or toys to entertain yourself with, no tv in the daytime, not much attention from anybody. I just remember being lonely a lot and getting into trouble for getting under people's feet while they struggled to get all of the house crap done manually without the mod cons we have now.
And as for the car safety stuff, yeah I guess it was fun, and I've said before that my Mom used her arm as a seatbelt, flinging it out every time she had to brake hard. Which would have been fine, up until the point when we got t boned at an intersection by our house when I was 11, and no amount of maternal arm flinging was going to stop me flying through the windshield.
11 days in the hospital and lots of plastic surgery on my face later, I'm going to go out on a limb and say seat belts are not a bad thing and I wish we'd used them back then. If there had been an infant in that car it would have been killed, without question.
So you bet your arse that these days I'm a sling wearing attention paying let the kid watch tv and play on the internet grateful for car seats and clothes dryers and dishwashers type of Mama. Oh you bet. I wouldn't go back to those days for anything.
I love your entire post but I especially like the parts I've bolded.
Thanks everyone for your comments - these sort of generational changes to parenting are fascinating.
I was talking to my sister last night (another subject of our mom's strapping-in sort of parenting) and she pointed out that maybe it was safer for mom to attach us to some sort of a seat so that she didn't burn us with the cigarette that she was constantly holding!!!! Yikes! My mom quit smoking long before I remember, but my sister was right, there was a whole lot of smoking (moms and dads) going on in those movies.
And to clarify, it wasn't like the stroller resembled today's fancy, comfortable vehicles at all. It was a rickety little metal stroller with an odd metal bar that had three colored balls that the baby could push side to side. It looked like it was just waiting to pinch a tiny finger or transmit tetanus!
I was born in the late 60s, and my mom didn't work outside the home. She kept a clean house, cooked dinner every night, had a garden and beautiful flower beds, and she cooked everything from scratch. I have to say though that she paid a lot of attention to us kids. We were always at the kitchen table drawing or playing with our toys while she was cooking, and she talked to us the whole time. We had a washing machine and dryer, and the utility room was right off of the kitchen. Summer mornings, we'd walk in the nearby woods and fill our buckets with raspberries, and then we'd all go home and spend the afternoon making jam together. But she didn't do anything by herself, just for her, and she still doesn't.
Well first up, I'm going to apologize in advance for raining on everybody's parade down memory lane.
I was born in the mid 60's. I remember playpens, prams (like the english variety that you push with the baby lying down in it), cribs, these bouncy chair things that you put babies in so they'd lay down strapped into them, basically anything that you could put a moving kid into so they'd stay put and you wouldn't have to pick them up. I know exactly what the OP's talking about.
I'm pretty sure back then the priority for Mums (at least where I was from, which at the time was a little behind the US) was to keep the house spotless and have dinner on the table for Dad when he got home, not to entertain or educate the child.
And Anonchick's right, there were no fancy devices to help out with the housework or entertain people. I don't remember this as a particularly good thing. My poor Grandma (who I spent most of my childhood with, my Mum having to work ridiculous hours - another benefit of the 60's being that women made half as much money as men, and Dad was long gone)
spent the entire Monday (laundry day) putting sheets and towels in the "copper" because there were no washing machines, stirring them with a big stick and then hanging them out on the clothesline, no matter what the weather. It was back breaking.
I was an only child and I don't remember all this in any kind of fond nostalgic way. I was constantly rattling around the place by myself, the adults being so preoccupied with all of the drudgery it took to run the house - there were no cheap books or toys to entertain yourself with, no tv in the daytime, not much attention from anybody. I just remember being lonely a lot and getting into trouble for getting under people's feet while they struggled to get all of the house crap done manually without the mod cons we have now.
I'm really confused by your post. I'm close to the same age as you---born early mid 60s.
How could your family have all of the modern conveniences of baby gadgets and not have the modern conveniences for household chores?
There were washing machines and dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in the 60s. Heck, all of those conveniences existed in the 50s too.
My mother had every modern convenience for running a house. Yet she never bought those baby gadgets.
I am a baby of the 1960s and my mother recently put all of our old home movies on a DVD. I had not seen most of them in many, many years. As I was watching them recently with my children, it struck me as odd how parents rarely seemed to hold or carry their babies. It seemed like the babies (me, my sisters, cousins....) were always strapped into some sort of a seating device like a stroller, busy seat, high chair... or maybe "loose", but in a play pen. I seldom saw a mom or dad just holding their baby and certainly didn't see anyone with their baby strapped to their body.
Any comments?
I grew up in the Sixties and I think just the opposite. People cart their kids around now in those plastic box seats. My parents didn't use a lot of equipment for us kids. I don't even remember those "busy seats" existing back then (thinking of two younger brothers, born in '66 and '69.) We did have high chairs and play pens, but most the kids just ran amok. I do remember rocking my brothers to sleep in the rocking chair.
And somebody had to hold the baby in the car because there were no car seats or seat belts!
I have pictures of me on my father's lap when I am a toddler.
I'm really confused by your post. I'm close to the same age as you---born early mid 60s.
How could your family have all of the modern conveniences of baby gadgets and not have the modern conveniences for household chores?
There were washing machines and dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in the 60s. Heck, all of those conveniences existed in the 50s too.
My mother had every modern convenience for running a house. Yet she never bought those baby gadgets.
Finster's a Brit. While we were using our washing machines, the Brits were still trying to figure out how to keep the drafts out of their dingy dark castles, and punishing their kids by tying them to The Rack
I'm really confused by your post. I'm close to the same age as you---born early mid 60s.
How could your family have all of the modern conveniences of baby gadgets and not have the modern conveniences for household chores?
There were washing machines and dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in the 60s. Heck, all of those conveniences existed in the 50s too.
My mother had every modern convenience for running a house. And she didn't buy all of those baby gadgets.
A playpen and a crib and a pram weren't gadgets. Prams have been around in England since the mid 1700's. They weren't modern.
Washing machines like we know them today weren't common in Australia in the early/mid 60's. Post WW2, appliances like those were expensive and not many people had them yet in every home, like they may have started to do in 50's America. And if they did have them, it was the type that had a wringer on the top, that you fed the clothes through manually to wring out the water, before hanging them on the clothesline.
A dishwasher? You've got to be joking!
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