Parent Time

Think you’ve heard your share of unwanted parenting tips and conflicting research about raising healthy, happy kids? Well, you’re not alone. There’s a long tradition of expert flip-flops and changing parenting philosophies stretching back generations. If you thought Aunt Mabel’s tips about potty training were annoying, just wait until you hear about all the misguided advice and weird science parents have had to put up with over the last 100 years or so. Case in point: the abdominal decompression chamber that promised to take much of the “labour” out of giving birth. (It may have been invented by an aircraft manufacturer, but this is one idea that never really got off the ground.) Here’s a look at some of the most memorable moments in the history of Canadian parenthood:

1893:
B.G. Jeffris and J.L. Nichols, authors of Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics — one of the best-selling marriage manuals of the day — warn expectant mothers to avoid sex during pregnancy. “Morning sickness… is greatly irritated by the habit of indulging in sexual gratification during pregnancy. If people would imitate the lower animals and reserve the vital forces of the mother for the benefit of her unborn child, it would be a great boon to humanity.”

1898:
J.P. Crozer Griffith, MD, offers tips on hiring a wet nurse in his book The Care of The Baby: A Manual for Mothers and Nurses: “A married woman is to be preferred, but the difficulties connected with obtaining a good wet nurse are so great, and married wet nurses often so scarce, that it is folly to refuse to engage an unmarried one if she is qualified in other respects. Because she has made one so false a step does not prove her wholly bad… [besides] there is no more probability of a baby imbibing the character of the nurse through the milk which she gives…than there is danger of a child learning to ‘moo’ because it is fed on cow’s milk.”

1900:
In her book For Wife and Mother, Annette Slocum, MD, advises expectant mothers to stay away from “riding on horseback, riding a bicycle, or running a sewing machine.” (The sewing machines of the day required a lot of vigorous foot action.)

1901:
A Canadian woman gives birth to an average of 4.6 children over her lifetime.

1916:
Alice B. Stockham, MD, author of Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, writes that it is no longer considered necessary to offer a newborn “catnip tea, panada [a thick paste made from bread crumbs, flour or rice], gruel, cracker water, cream tea, etc.” while waiting for the mother’s milk to come in.

1928:
Chatelaine advice columnist Stella E. Pines, RN, urges Canadian mothers to give birth in a hospital that trains newborns to sleep through the night right away so moms won’t miss out on much-needed sleep when they get home: “Nearly all babies cry for the first five or six nights. It does them no harm unless in excess. In fact the exercise helps to establish good lung capacity.”

1930:
Eureka! Scientists discover that ovulation occurs in the middle of the menstrual cycle, not during menstruation, as had previously been believed.

1930:
Pablum is invented by three doctors at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

1931:
Nurse Margaret Laine warns Chatelaine readers about the dire consequences of deviating from baby’s schedule: “When making arrangements for the baby’s morning bath, it should be remembered that a certain time should definitely be set apart for it and that nothing should be allowed to encroach upon that particular time. Unless regular hours and strict punctuality are enforced, the baby cannot be well trained and most people will agree that, apart from his physical well-being, which must also suffer, a badly trained baby is a nuisance to himself and to all those with whom he comes into contact.”

1936:
John W.S. McCullough, MD, writes in Chatelaine that moms risk spoiling their babies if they give them too much attention: “Children under two should not be in the parents’ company too much.”

1942:
Popular parenting book The Canadian Mother and Child stresses the importance of starting toilet training as soon as possible: “Usually a child, when a month old, will go to stool at a definite time of the day, or it may be trained to this by the use of soap suppositories or a rubber catheter which will act as a stimulant to bowel action.... Later, at about the fifth or sixth month, the child may be made to sit on a specially constructed toilet chair.”

1942:
The Canadian Mother and Child advises pregnant women to switch from regular corsets to expandable maternity corsets for the duration of their pregnancies, and reminds mothers-to-be that corsets should never be used to conceal a pregnancy.

1945:
Maclean’s reports that the maternal mortality rate has dropped to just two to three per 1,000 births — a vast improvement over a century earlier when one out of every five mothers died as a result of pregnancy or birthing-related complications. (Today there are fewer than five maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.)

1946:
The first edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care hits bookstore shelves. By the end of the century, more than 50 million copies will have been sold, making the book the second best-selling book of all time, after the Bible.

1950:
Condoms are available in Canadian drugstores, but they’re kept in drawers under the counter. If you want them, you have to ask.

1954:
Susan Olivia Poole, a mother of seven from Vancouver, invents the Jolly Jumper.

1955:
Broadcaster and author Kate Aitken has some stern words for mothers who are willing to “let themselves go” after the birth of a baby: “Are you as fussy about clean hair, clean nails, becoming clothes, well-fitting shoes as you were two years ago? Maternity is no excuse for sloppiness, but rather an incentive to a more attractive personality.”

1960:
The Caesarean rate sits at five percent. By the late 1980s, it will have jumped to 25 percent.

1960:
The world’s first effective birth control pill — Enovid-10 — hits the market, ushering in the sexual revolution. It is later discovered that Enovid-10 contains ten times as much estrogen as what is needed for contraceptive purposes.

1960:
The Financial Post reports that Canadian aircraft manufacturer Canadair is developing a new obstetrical aid designed to speed up and ease childbirth. Known as an “abdominal decompression chamber,” the device fits over the mother’s abdomen and reduces atmospheric pressure on the abdominal wall to help the muscles relax during the first stage of labour. An ordinary household vacuum cleaner is hooked up to the dome to remove air from the chamber.

1962:
The baby sleeper — described in the Financial Post as “a one-piece stretchable suit of nylon or a cotton-nylon combination for babies” — is invented.

1962:
The anti-nausea drug thalidomide is pulled off the Canadian market in April, a year to the month after first being approved in Canada. At least 20 percent of babies whose mothers took the drug during their fourth to eighth weeks of pregnancy were severely deformed.

1963:
In the latest edition of his book, Expectant Motherhood, Nicholson J. Eastman, MD, suggests pregnant women limit themselves to ten cigarettes per day. “It seems clear that the newborns of mothers who smoke tend to weigh slightly less than those of mothers who do not smoke. But whether this lower birth weight indicates an injurious effect has not been established.”

1964:
Christina Newman describes the “monstrosities” of maternity fashion in Maclean’s magazine. “What this country needs is a good twenty-five-dollar maternity dress,” she declares.

1967:
Maclean’s reveals that fathers are welcome in the delivery room at one Canadian hospital, St. Joseph’s in Hamilton, Ontario. Not all obstetricians are enthusiastic, however: “It’s true the husband is present at the laying of the keel, but I’m damned if I think he has any right to a place at the launching,” declares one Montreal doc.

1967:
Mr. Dressup hits the airwaves.

1969:
Contraceptives become legal for use in Canada — and on Dominion Day no less (renamed Canada Day in 1982)! Until this time, condoms were technically approved only for disease prevention.

1970:
The latest edition of The Canadian Mother and Child informs mothers that fresh cow’s milk, canned evaporated whole or half-skimmed milk and powdered whole milk are all suitable substitutes for breastmilk, provided that moms add granulated sugar or corn syrup to this homemade “formula.”

1972:
The federal government introduces changes to the income tax act that allow employed mothers to deduct child-care expenses from their taxes for the first time.

1977:
Warner-Lambert launches the world’s first home pregnancy test.

1978:
Ultrasound technology provides an alternative to X-rays.

1978:
The world’s first test-tube baby is born in Britain.

1983:
Statistics Canada reports a significant increase in the number of women giving birth after age 30 — 88,043 births compared to 65,698 a decade earlier.

1984:
Today’s Parent magazine is founded.

1985:
Baby monitors become popular with Canadian parents.

1997:
The fertility rate drops to the lowest level in Canadian history — 1.6 children per woman.

2000:
The birth control pill is first advertised on television.

2002:
A Statistics Canada study reveals that the number of working fathers who took time off to be with their newborns jumped to 21,530 in 2001, the year in which the federal government introduced an expanded package of parental benefits. That’s an 80 percent increase over 2000.

March 2003