The Worst Advise for Parents
Going back to the 1700's. Read this today and found it funny. You can read the whole article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/worst-parenting-advice_n_219817...
But here is the bad advice:
In the annals of bad baby advice, a dubious prize goes to Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl, who provoked outrage last year when it came to light that a book he’d written with his wife, To Train Up a Child, was allegedly linked to the deaths of three children by abuse and neglect. An advocate of training children the way one might “stubborn mules,” Pearl recommends eliminating the “selfish compulsion” of 6-month-old babies by striking them with wooden spoons or “flexible tubing.” In a less violent vein, according to this recent video clip, he also believes that devoted mothers can potty-train their infants by the time they’re 2 weeks old.
Inspired by Pearl (and the tale of a 1960s Miami pediatrician who believed in feeding solids to newborns; more about that below), I decided to survey the worst advice given to parents, going back to the 1700s. What stands out most in these books is the chiding tone espoused by the mostly male physicians writing them. From the 1700s until the mid-20th century, when Dr. Benjamin Spock advocated a gentler, instinct-based approach to parenting in The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, science was often positioned in opposition to motherly instinct, and mothers were repeatedly criticized for being “anxious, well-meaning, but ignorant,” as one 1916 book put it. Of course, it was often the so-called experts who were ignorant. Scottish physician William Buchan’s 1804 book Advice to Mothers informed them that “in all cases of dwarfishness or deformity, ninety-nine out of a hundred are owing to the folly, misconduct or neglect of mothers.”
Some of the tips -- like infant lard baths -- are not necessarily bad, just strange to contemporary eyes. And some are remarkable only for the fact that they were necessary. An 1878 book called Advice to Mother informed said mother that she should not give her baby gin to relieve flatulence. A 1749 essay by a physician advised changing infants’ clothing frequently because clean clothes didn’t, in fact, “rob them of their nourishing Juices.” Here are the other choice examples:
1) A Spoiled Baby Is a Socialist Baby
2) Toilet Train Your Newborns
3)Don’t Poison the Baby With Angry Breast Milk
4)Watch Out for the Wet Nurse (and Baby Nurse, and Washerwoman …)
5)Lard Baths
6)Start Solids at 2 Days Old
