In July 1957, my father, Will Warren, was alone out on his farm near Garnett, Kansas. My mother had died several years earlier, and my dad, 64 and used to his wife doing all the homemaking tasks, didn’t do well as a single person. My first baby was born the week my mother died, and by 1957, we had three more babies. We lived 350 miles away in West Des Moines, Iowa. Obviously I was not doing much to assuage Dad’s loneliness.
I decided better communication might help, and I even had an ulterior motive for that communication. I wrote to Dad:
Now that Eric is a month old and life has calmed down a little, I plan to write to you more often. Since we’re together so seldom, I’ll describe Mike, Steve, Pat, and Eric and their activities in some detail. I’d like you to feel you know them when we do get together.
Another reason I plan to write in detail – although I don’t want to take time to attempt free-lancing magazine articles now, I’d like to practice writing regularly. Twenty years from now if I want to free-lance, I’d rather not have to waste several years learning how. So perhaps I could learn a little now in this way — I’ll write you a letter regularly telling you of the children’s activities. I’ll make a carbon for my file, and send the original to you.
I never freelanced. My writing life took a different direction. But I’m glad I kept carbons of those letters. (Remember carbons? No computers then.) I’m also glad I found them recently. It’s not easy, around my home anyhow, to find things 50 years later!
We were living in a new development, a single row of houses, each containing about 900 square feet of living space. Behind us was a steep hill, a wonderful place for sledding during the Iowa winters.
Beyond our yard, down at the bottom of the hill, was a huge cornfield. That cornfield became an enormous development after we left Iowa, block after block of houses and strip malls.
We had sidewalks in front of the houses, but instead of a gutter, a big ditch, then the road. Children were absolutely not to cross that ditch. Across the road was a cemetery populated by two beautiful swans along with lots of graves. We frequently took the children across to visit with the swans.
We were the fifth house from the corner. By 1957, 14 children aged 10 and under, 12 of them under age 8, lived in those five houses. When I wrote that first letter, Eric was a month old; Pat, 20 months; Steve, 39 months; and Mike, a month from his fifth birthday. We had no fences except a six-foot long structure we put up in the back on one side of our lot to give us a little privacy.
Life in the suburbs, at least in West Des Moines, was very different for the kids than it is today. There was a great deal of freedom. They all, once they could navigate by themselves, had the run of the neighborhood, at least the neighborhood behind those first five houses. As they grew older, they traveled further to play. No play dates then. Play dates weren’t needed. One simply played with whomever was handy – and a lot of playmates were nearby.
To a surprising extent, siblings looked after the littler ones. In fact, the older children of the block (the 5-7-year-olds) often included the little ones in their play.
Parenting in the Fifties
Parenting in the 1950s was different. Compared to today, an amazing amount of freedom was deemed okay for the children. Parenting differed in other ways, too. In fact, with each generation, accepted practices of child rearing change significantly through the years.
My father was born in 1893. He wore dresses until he was 4 or 5 years old. Children were to be seen and not heard at that time. Almost all babies were breastfed throughout the first year. When they started eating table food, they ate what the adults ate.
By the time my husband and I were born in the late 1920s, bottle-feeding had become acceptable for many mothers. The federal publication on baby care for that time included instructions on toilet training one’s baby when he was three months old. The mother was told to put the baby on the potty chair on her lap at that age and expect him to perform!
A few years before our children were born, the baby books sternly admonished Mom to feed the baby strictly on schedule. (Babies born with wristwatches?) For most babies, according to the book, this meant every four hours. If a baby couldn’t cope with that schedule, then it was okay to switch to feeding him every three hours, but again, strictly by the clock. Apparently no baby needed a 31/2 hour schedule.
When our children were born, that schedule conviction still prevailed to quite an extent. I didn’t exactly follow those instructions, but thought if I were an ideal mom, I “should” get each one on a schedule as quickly as possible.
In the 50s, breastfeeding was not typical, at least not among my friends. Bottles were still widely used. I chose to breastfeed, but had absolutely no guidance on how to do so successfully. And I was trying to put those babies on a four-hour schedule! Now I know that the stomachs of newborns can hold about one teaspoon of food, and therefore infants need to be fed frequently, actually every two or three hours during the first weeks, sometimes even more often. But I didn’t know that in the 50s, and nobody suggested such a wild idea to me.
Back then, we were told to start feeding the baby solid food as early as possible, at least by two months. We know now that feeding solid food too early is likely to cause allergies for that baby as s/he grows older. Babies should stay away from solid food for at least four months, preferably six. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that all babies be breastfed with no solid food for the first six months.
Our Steve has rather severe allergies, no doubt at least partly caused by my spooning cereal into his mouth when he was only a few weeks old. After all, I wanted to be a good mom, and we thought the best mom was the one who fed her baby solid food the earliest.
I really cringed when I read my proud statement that I had gained no weight in my last three months of pregnancy (page 76). I had already gained 18 pounds, and at that time, doctors considered 15-18 pounds weight gain ideal during pregnancy. So I dieted. Not a good way to go.
For my second pregnancy, the doctor even prescribed diet pills! Thank goodness the one or two I took made me feel so jittery, I threw the rest away. We know now that most women need to gain 25-35 pounds during pregnancy, and diet pills are an absolute no-no during this time.
My Changing Parenting Philosophy
Some of the things I read in these letters, strategies we used to discipline our children, I firmly disagree with now. I have refrained from adding editorial notes to the letters. I decided they would give a more honest picture of life at that time if left as written. However, as I read them now, sometimes I sigh deeply. I’m the author or co-author of a seven-book series on parenting, and some of my current thinking on appropriate parenting does not match our practices in the 50s.
We ran a pretty tight ship when we were parenting four children under five. We spanked occasionally for various misdeeds. I firmly believe now that spanking teaches a child that bigger people can hit little people, but not much else. A swat on a child’s bottom is not likely to physically harm him, but neither is it likely to teach him to behave any better.
I think we finally learned that lesson by the time Erin, our Bonus Baby, was born. I’m quite sure we never spanked Erin. Or could it have been because she was practically an only child as she was growing up? Does the phenomenon of several small children tearing around and behaving as small children do more likely lead to spanking? Probably . . . which doesn’t make it right.
As an example, on page 65, I write,
The other evening I heard Bob go in the bathroom, take Steve out of the tub, and spank him soundly. I asked later what had happened. He said Steve had a toy cup, and was nonchalantly pouring cups of water out of the tub onto the floor. Pat was standing there with a towel, mopping up as fast as he poured.
Today I don’t think I’d spank Steve for dumping water on the floor. After all, Pat was keeping it mopped up. On the other hand, we had wood floors, so soaking the bathroom floor with water wasn’t such a good idea.
Insisting Steve clean up his mess seems a better approach – except he would probably have enjoyed the “punishment.” But is that really a problem? The important thing was to teach him not to dump water on the bathroom floor. Spanking was not a good solution.
As I think of those years when the children were small, my memories are mostly pretty positive. Of course I got tired and upset, and undoubtedly screamed at my kids, but by and large, we had a good time. Being able to stay home during that time was an important part of that satisfaction.
On the opposite page is an article I wrote in 1957. It illustrates the mind set of the times, I think. First, we were home-makers, a perfectly good term for then or now. Young parents today who work full time certainly are homemakers too. But in the 50s, there was a greater emphasis on the importance of “standards” in homemaking, i.e., that the home must be clean, the meals perfect, etc., even as many moms were caring simultaneously for several preschool children. These moms ideally were to stick with child-rearing until their children were grown, and be the perfect homemaker as they did so. Many of us thought this was the way it was supposed to be. My article was written in protest of that ideal.
I can remember actually thinking and talking with Bob about my philosophy of child rearing. True to my era, I thought ideally Mom would stay home with the kids while Dad earned the living. I also knew I was interested in a career. But instead of trying to do both, as so many young mothers must do today, I thought it best to focus on the parenting for a while.
I thought this was a reason to have several children. Parenting three or four (or six, our original plan) would make it “worthwhile” to stay home. I would find it a little hard to defend that conviction now. However, I still think, if Dad can earn the living and Mom can stay home with the children, and mom wants to be home, it can be a lovely way to live. But I no longer think this is the “way it’s supposed to be” for everyone.
We are all so different, and we can parent well in different ways. We can’t have, or should not have rules as to who cares for the children full-time. Really good day care can be an excellent substitute for full-time Mom care. And of course Dad might well be the one who stays home and parents the children.
I was shocked to read, 50 years later, my comment on page 77 about the woman who wanted to be a doctor. I read about her in the April 1958 Ladies Home Journal “How America Lives” story. Instead of going to medical school, this woman married young and quickly had several children. Then she realized she still wanted to be a doctor. She and her husband decided to make the necessary sacrifices for her to realize her dream. At the time the story was written, she was ready to begin practicing medicine and was convinced her husband, a factory worker, would quit his job and find another wherever she chose to practice.
My reaction to that story? No, I didn’t admire the mother’s ambition or how much it might mean to her children and her husband for her to realize her dream. Instead, I wrote, “The article was interesting, but sounded sort of awful, too. I’m glad I’m not the brainy one in this family. It’s much more convenient when it’s the man who is ambitious.” Today, I would admire her for following her dream, knowing that she could also parent well, perhaps because she was also doing what she needed to do. I also finally realized that Bob and I had different interests and abilities, and that this did not mean one was “brainier” than the other.
Apparently I hadn’t discovered Women’s Liberation yet when these letters or the “Perfect Homemaker” article were written.
Actually, I think my generation of women were the lucky ones. So many of us stayed home to parent our kids while they were little, then had time for the careers we wanted. We had it both ways. For many young parents today, this is not possible.
Our parenting methods worked pretty well after all. After some very traumatic teen years, all five children are living satisfying lives. For a synopsis of Mike, Steve, Pati, Eric, and Bonus Baby Erin as adults, see the “Afterword.”
