were no longer slaves to the washing
machine.
The 80s mama-to-be would
have worn:
a roomy tent-dress,
with contrasting or feature collar, à la
Princess Diana.
The 90s
In the 90s, the sheer volume of
information available to parents grew
enormously as the internet became
more mainstream. But the decade
also saw the arrival of a new babycare
expert on the block. Dr Sears’ The
Baby Book:
Everything You Need to
Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age
Two
became a bestseller, although its
emphasis on “attachment parenting”
can’t have held many surprises for
those who had been paying attention to
some of the previous decades’ childcare
advice. Babies should be nursed for as
long as the mother and baby enjoy it,
mothers should respond promptly to a
baby’s cries, and babies should be kept
close at all times.
By the 90s, the World Health
Organization recommended
breastfeeding for at least three months,
and 62 percent of mums breastfed
initially in the UK. But the big news
in baby feeding was
Playtimes
’ favourite
Annabel Karmel.
Her Complete Baby
and Toddler Meal Planner
(1991) found
its way onto thousands of bookshelves,
and many parents ditched jarred
baby food in favour of Annabel’s
nutritious, home-cooked delights. All
sorts of combinations of ingredients
were mixed (grape and chicken purée,
anyone?) so babies were nourished and
their tastebuds tickled. Delicacies could
be made, then frozen in ice-cube trays
to make tiny, baby-sized portions –
freezers everywhere were packed with
weird and wonderful frozen cubes that
no bleary-eyed mum
would want to
mistakenly add
to a gin and
tonic.
The 90s
mama-to-be
would have worn:
Nothing! In 1991,
Demi Moore posed
nude for a
Vanity
Fair
photo shoot
while pregnant,
saying that
this gave women
“permission to feel sexy
and attractive when you’re pregnant.”
No longer did pregnant ladies just have
to battle nausea, varicose veins and a
whole host of other ailments – they now
had to look good and feel sexy in the
process.
The Noughties
Well, wouldn’t you just know it? Just
when mums and dads thought that
attachment parenting was the last
word in babycare, another childcare
‘bible’ hit the shelves in the noughties,
and its message couldn’t have been
more different.
The Contented Little Baby
Book
, by Gina Ford, advocated babies
sleeping in their own cot, in their
own darkened room from day one,
and waking baby at 7 o’ clock every
morning so the day’s programme of
scheduled feeds, sleeps, nappy changes
and activities could commence. Stop
me if any of this sounds familiar... At
postnatal coffee mornings, you could
set your watch by the synchronised
feeding, as the number of mums
“doing Gina” grew. Babies were no
longer to be picked up every time they
whimpered, but instead should be left
to learn to settle themselves. Following
the routines, it was claimed, should
result in a contented baby who quickly
learnt to sleep through the night.
During the noughties, the long
post-delivery hospital stays of the
past were a distant memory, as most
women were sent home after a day or
two – sometimes after a mere matter of
hours. The majority
of women breastfed
(at least initially), and
official advice was (and
still is) to breastfeed exclusively
for six months before introducing
solids. But just when parents had
perfected their ice-cube trays of
babyfood mush, a new
phenomenon hit the
highchair. Parents were
urged to banish the
blender and instead let
baby feed himself from
a selection of suitably-sized
chunks of normal food in a
process known as baby-led weaning.
And also in the food department, those
oh-so-modern plastic feeding bottles
started to come under scrutiny, and the
glass bottles of yesteryear went back
into production. And just as grannies
were telling parents how lucky they
were not to be washing nappies (whilst
simultaneously nagging them about
their slouchiness in the potty-training
department, as the average training
age had crept up from 18 months to
three years) environmental concerns
meant that washable nappies – albeit
new and improved – were making a
comeback.
The noughties mama-to-be
would have worn:
wrap dresses,
loose, kaftan-style tunics, or full-on
body-con Lycra.
The here and now
In our current age of information
overload, new baby-raising ideas,
trends and micro-trends appear – and
disappear – quicker than ever. But if
the past six decades have taught us
anything, it is that, just like maternity
wear, some childcare ideas can edge
in and out of fashion. Our mothers’
babycare techniques were probably
different to ours, and who knows
what theories will be in vogue by the
time our children become parents?
As long as we stay aware of advances
in medical knowledge that help us
keep our babies safe and healthy, and
strive to be “good enough” parents,
rather than to slavishly follow one
particular ideology, perhaps our job
is done. Dr Spock, fresh from 1946,
sums it up, saying, “Don’t take too
seriously all that the neighbours say.
Don’t be overawed by what the experts
say… take it easy [and] trust your own
instincts.”
March 2015
37
