Reading Baby Books: Medicine, Marketing, Money and the Lives of American Infants (Section 1 CULTURE AND SOCIETY‪)‬

Poor Charlie Flood! In 1914 at the age of four months he burned his face with quicklime and three months later caught a buttonhook on his tongue. As a toddler there were more accidents - a nail in his foot, and then a fall while holding a bottle that left glass in his hand. We learn of these calamities not from court records reporting neglect or from hospital files but from his mother, who carefully recorded each event in his baby book. (1) Like Charlie many babies had accidents and hurt themselves - falling down stairs, off porches, and out of high chairs and cribs. In the first half of the twentieth century mothers lovingly recorded these misadventures, and one baby book--defined simply as item with one or more printed pages for recording information about newborns--even included an entry page for "first tumble." (2) By the post World War II era, accounts of accidents largely vanished. Was it better baby-proofing? More vigilant parenting? Had infants become less curious and accident-prone? Or, in the context of new accident prevention and home safety programs, had what had once seemed commonplace or amusing become evidence of neglect, abuse, or bad parenting, leading mothers to stop recording such events? (3) As the case of the vanishing accident reveals, baby books are a rich historical source, detailing the lives of babies and the changing expectations and practices of parents. These ephemeral publications--formatted with one or more printed pages for recording information about infants--were sold or distributed as keepsakes and were commonplace in the United States throughout the twentieth century and remain in use today. Not all baby books were, in fact, books. They ranged from expensive, large, hardbound volumes to cheaply printed pamphlets designed largely as advertising or as health department advice manuals. (4)