Thanks for posting this!

#18 Brought back memories. LOL
I used to love tripe in hot, super hot, spicy red sauce (not menudo) when I was little. It was what I always wanted when I was sick. It was the only thing they could get me to eat when i was so very sick with the two week measles at age five. I survived on tripe and orange juice. My older brother traveled across the bay to San Francisco on a bus with my grandfather to get it at a little hole in the wall restaurant on Clement Street. To this day my brother and I talk about that wonderful tripe they had. Never found anything similar at a Mexican restaurant since.

Crazy advice is still being given. DD's sister-in-law read some book about sleep times by age for proper brain development. She was putting her 14 month old to bed at 5:30. and wondering why he was up and ready to go at 3 AM. LOL After all the book said he would sleep at least 12 and possibly 14 hours. I think she loosened up a little (out of sheer fatigue probably) but they still miss a lot of fun things because of early bedtime. No family dinners, no evening walks with the littles, no late afternoon birthday parties.

We heard many of these whacked out ideas during our children's time of growing up. My wife will get a kick out of these as she has had to deal with these. She worked as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in the after-birth ward in a hospital.

The one about potty training in the 1930's explains my mother-in-law's suggestion about my first baby. She said I might want to "get her little system on a schedule." LOL

I remember reading in the early 1960's that pregnant women should take up smoking to relax them.

And the persistent advice to not touch your baby! That's just dangerous. Even into the 70's, the doctor who delivered most of the babies around here (not mine!) told mothers not to pick up a crying baby. He advised them to keep newborns in the basement so they wouldn't be heard.

Cute pictures! I found some of them to be spot on. Why not liver? It's full of iron. Why is that awful? And letting them cry, sure, why not. At least sometimes. Not every time. The contraption ideas and pregnancy ideas were were the odd ones. Well, I dunno. Maybe stripping furniture is therapeutic enough to get rid of postpartum. Not really, just being silly.

Maybe the chemicals in furniture stripper got the mother high.

The timing of the liver soup is off. Three-month-old babies do much better on breast milk alone. Back then they introduced solids early--too early. And back then liver was probably a more wholesome food. Since the organ serves a filter, liver may contain high concentrations of pesticides today. Organic liver is a solution, but an expensive one.

Solids too early. That makes sense!

At first I thought some of these didn't sound that crazy. Then I read on lol That baby cage was hilarious. And yes liver is a very nutrient dense food that would be good for moms. Probably not the baby. Like Alisande said breast milk would be best, and if the mom is consuming liver the baby will benefit through the milk.

One of my employees was a woman who's mother and father always avoided touching her or consoling her when needed, as a result she was very closed in her emotions. It took 20 years before she could take openly with me and we became best friends till she passed. When her 21 year old brother died of a flu, no one told her what happened and then the next day they brought her into their living room and he was laid out in a coffin. She sat next to them all day having no idea what happened to him. My heart ached for her. her mother told her later that her own mother did the same treatment so that's how she thought children should be reared.

Yaya, my Grandmother shared a similar tale with me about her baby sister. The child died around 3 or 4 months of age. My g'mother being abut 3 1/2. No one told her that the baby had died.

The baby was laid out in a "box" in the living room and G'mother & her brother (2 yrs) had to sit beside it and be still while people came through to pay their respects. G'mother remembered clearly the people wailing and crying, and how she didn't understand what was happening. She thought they were going to put her & her brother "on display" next.

How absolutely confusing (not to mention traumatic) for a child!!

Fortunately for me and my siblings (born 1947, 1954 and 1957) my mom didn't follow the advice not to hold or cuddle your children or let the baby cry it out. My parents were foster parents in the 60's to 21 infants (one at a time) waiting for adoption through social services. As such we had regular visits from social workers to check on the babies. I recall on several occasions after the social worker visited, my mom would express frustration that the social worker told mom not to love, hug or cuddle the infants, partly so as not to form an attachment between my mom and the baby. Mom didn't follow that advice and I'm sure we were all the better for it.

I remember being told in the 1970's to not hold baby any more than necessary because all that handling made their little bodies sore. So I would feel guilty over a lengthy snuggle. But not for long. As soon as the older folks weren't watching ....we cuddled all the time!

I'm surprised that advice was going around in the 1970's, Elizabeth, but I guess it figures it came from older folks (like my mother-in-law, who was promoting uber-early potty training LOL). I had my babies in the 70's, and all the emphasis was on natural childbirth, breastfeeding, and maternal-infant bonding. Right up my alley!

That advise was outdated when I had babies but that was what my family believed in. When they saw how happy and cheerful my baby was...they changed their tune. I have a friend who brags that her daughter ( now in her 40's) was potty trained at 7 months. Interesting since she couldn't walk yet. LOL.

I think I nearly starved my first born for the first couple of weeks because the nurses in the hospital told me she would drink about 4 ounces every 3 hours. I took that literally. Bless her, she was sometimes more hungry than that. When I just let her eat/ drink what she wanted she was much happier and guess what, so was I. (I wasn't nursing, but bottle feeding.).

I had a nurse tell me that my baby would get kidney failure if I didn't give supplemental water bottles. Thank goodness I was well read and informed. Rubber nipples never touched my children's lips.

Then there was the advise that you shouldn't nurse while pregnant. Both DD and I nursed throughout our second pregnancies. In fact DD tandem fed her toddler and her newborn.

DD's children never slept in a crib by themselves. They went from parent's bed, later to a three sided crib attached to parent's bed. Never slept in a bedroom by themselves all night until DGD was in her 4th year. They share a room so DGS was ready to move sooner to a big kids bed. Goes against all the child care advice about making children independent by making them sleep alone. They are the most independent and secure outgoing little individuals one could meet. Very confident and socially mature.

I was having trouble finding castor oil (for soap making) locally. My DH insisted I should be looking in the baby section and said "isn't that what they give babies in cartoons when they aren't feeling well?" lol! Yes. But now we know that it causes people to barf and poop because it is poison, so I don't think they keep it there any more. We did eventually find it, on the bottom shelf of a locked up section with the stuff you take right before a colonoscopy hahaha! My mom talks about being a young nurse and giving all the children in the ward a spoon of cod liver oil before bed. *blerg*.

I was raised by wolves (fiercely protective but often absent, we were left to fend for ourselves and be independent). My husband was raised by monkeys. I haven't asked my daughter what kind of animals we are yet, I'll wait until she is 30 and has had a few years of therapy under her belt ROFL!

Dances.

Why is Castor Oil poison?

maybe I should clarify. Some parents (helicopter!) won't let a baby cry ever. If they "look" like they're going to cry, rush right in and pick them up immediately. Maybe they could learn to say "You're ok, brush it off" every once in a while. Babies tend to fall a lot when learning to walk or sit. They don't always get hurt. Sometimes they do. Sometimes, they need to know life can be bumpy, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the world. I always thought it was ok to let my son feel some disappointment and he seems to be the better for it. I just don't want to be like a helicopter parent, not that I would never comfort him. Too far the other way, and I've seen my mom and how her generation grew up and it's not how I would've raised my child. She's very shy about hugging.