Baby Talk magazine, 1939
Nov. 20th, 2004 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kcobwebSo, I thought I'd transcribe an article from my new baby present for the enjoyment of all. What it was like to be a working mom, circa 1939:
Part-Time Parents
by Lucille Williams
I see my child only two and a half hours a day! Because I am one of the three and a half million married working women in this country. Some of us work because we have the urge, some because our standard of living is based on a joint income – and a great many of us refuse to be deprived of the experience of motherhood.
My baby was very nearly an office baby. Thanks to a broad-minded advertising agency boss I was permitted to keep right on working up until several weeks before the baby arrived. My pregnancy was unusually happy and healthy, for a number of reasons. Going to the office kept me too busy to worry about my own symptoms. I did not even have any financial worried because my salary during that period neatly disposed of the hospital bill, the doctor’s fee, the baby’s layette. Daily contact with extra-household activities made me somewhat less of a bore to husband and friends than the non-working mother-to-be, who is usually a little too consumed with the importance of the coming event to be very good company. And most important of all, the regularity of my living schedule kept me in grand health. Up at the same time every morning, lunch at the same hour, enough exercise getting to and from the office, and coming home pleasantly tired so that rest was really welcome – I did not have an ill moment.
Six weeks after the baby was born I returned to my office with the doctor’s permission. Knowing that I was going to go back to work so soon, I chose a baby doctor recommended by a friend as being as thoughtful of the parents’ welfare as the child’s. He was, too, for he established the baby’s schedule from the start so as to be most convenient for a working mother. When we came home from the hospital, baby was started right off on a seven-to-seven, instead of the usual six-to-six o’clock schedule. This served the double purpose of allowing me a later rising time, as well as permitting me to give the baby her evening feeding, and not some home and miss seeing her entirely.
Since the baby was gaining weight, the inconvenient late feeding hours were disposed of as soon as possible. By the time we let the trained nurse go, when baby was four weeks old, the three o’clock feeding had been eliminated. When she was months old we stopped the midnight bottle. And when she was four and a half months old she was promoted to three meals a day.
During these first four and a half months of nocturnal disturbance, my husband and I learned to fall asleep as quickly as sailors on twenty-four hour a day duty. The minute the baby went to sleep we dived for our beds and slept fast, for we knew it would seem only a few minutes before the next job to be done. I say "my husband and I" advisedly, for he played as important a part in the baby’s care as I did. Realizing that I had two jobs on my hands my husband undertook to share the baby-job with me, and did it very well indeed. He learned all the mysteries of formula-making, bringing up bubbles, and diaper-changing, so that we alternated mornings in caring for the baby, each getting a turn at the extra hour of morning sleep before going off to work.
The working mother requires not only a super-husband, but something of a super-maid. Assuming the super-maid’s existence (and I was lucky enough to have one) the next step is a carefully-planned schedule. We had no room for our maid to sleep in, so until her arrival at 8:30, we had some pretty fancy dovetailing to manage. I rose at quarter to seven, prepared the baby’s breakfast, and while my husband picked her up and changed her, I dressed. While I fed her, he fixed our breakfast and after putting baby back to bed for her morning nap, I ate, grabbed my hat and dashed out of the house at 8:30 sharp. During baby’s morning nap the maid prepared the formula and got the housework started. Thanks to diaper service that was one problem she did not have to cope with.
Because we live in New York the twice-daily airing is more of a problem than for the lucky ones who have sunporches or back yards. From ten till twelve and from three to five the baby must get her sunshine and, of course, the maid must take her. So the two-hour nap after lunch releases the maid to complete her house work between airings.
At five-thirty I come breathlessly into the house and the maid gets to work on our dinner. Sometimes in the elevator of our apartment I startle the neighbors by removing beads, pins or anything else baby is likely to grab. I tear in, wash my hands, give baby her bath, and then her supper at six. We have a very brief few minutes for ourselves (this includes father, of course) and at seven she is tucked in for the night.
You can imagine that a schedule like this keeps a mother’s private life down to an absolute minimum. Saturdays and Sundays are all too short. If I take my Saturday afternoons for shopping or having my hair and nails done I’ve lost one precious afternoon with the baby. If I spent my Sundays stealing the extra rest I really need I’ve passed up on of my few chances to catch up with my daughter’s newest tricks.
So I do the only thing one can do under the circumstances, which is plan in advance and compromise a little. Looking well is an important part of my job, so every other Saturday afternoon belongs to the beauty parlor. Sundays my husband and I divide, so that mornings I go back to bed for a nap after baby’s breakfast while he takes her out – and afternoons he rests while I have her.
I understand from my doctor that it takes about a year after a baby is born for a woman to feel really right again. I judged that with my double job I should have double rest. So I manage to get nine or ten hours of sleep a night. That means that our evenings aren’t exactly full of "night life." And still, our life is by no means full. We manage a movie a week (though seldom together); we have friends to call and arrange to get out occasionally for joint evenings; we read vastly; we have our pet radio programs; we both find the time and the energy to write an occasional article at night.
Best of all I find in my work a stimulus that keeps me mentally alert, conversant with exciting new events, in contact with diversified people and not bounded on all four sides by baby! In other words I’m having my cake and eating it, for my interests include both the nursery and the business world with lots to gain from both.
I know my baby is healthy and happy, well-trained and keen. For the mother who works in an office knows the value and the mechanics of routine and routine is accepted as being one of the most important factors in bringing up a well-adjusted, healthy child. I have a feeling that the warm greeting she gives me when I come home at night is warmer still because I come from another world and am not taken for granted. And I am sure that we manage to crowd into our brief hours together "over-time" of fun to compensate for being "part-time" parents.
Part-Time Parents
by Lucille Williams
I see my child only two and a half hours a day! Because I am one of the three and a half million married working women in this country. Some of us work because we have the urge, some because our standard of living is based on a joint income – and a great many of us refuse to be deprived of the experience of motherhood.
My baby was very nearly an office baby. Thanks to a broad-minded advertising agency boss I was permitted to keep right on working up until several weeks before the baby arrived. My pregnancy was unusually happy and healthy, for a number of reasons. Going to the office kept me too busy to worry about my own symptoms. I did not even have any financial worried because my salary during that period neatly disposed of the hospital bill, the doctor’s fee, the baby’s layette. Daily contact with extra-household activities made me somewhat less of a bore to husband and friends than the non-working mother-to-be, who is usually a little too consumed with the importance of the coming event to be very good company. And most important of all, the regularity of my living schedule kept me in grand health. Up at the same time every morning, lunch at the same hour, enough exercise getting to and from the office, and coming home pleasantly tired so that rest was really welcome – I did not have an ill moment.
Six weeks after the baby was born I returned to my office with the doctor’s permission. Knowing that I was going to go back to work so soon, I chose a baby doctor recommended by a friend as being as thoughtful of the parents’ welfare as the child’s. He was, too, for he established the baby’s schedule from the start so as to be most convenient for a working mother. When we came home from the hospital, baby was started right off on a seven-to-seven, instead of the usual six-to-six o’clock schedule. This served the double purpose of allowing me a later rising time, as well as permitting me to give the baby her evening feeding, and not some home and miss seeing her entirely.
Since the baby was gaining weight, the inconvenient late feeding hours were disposed of as soon as possible. By the time we let the trained nurse go, when baby was four weeks old, the three o’clock feeding had been eliminated. When she was months old we stopped the midnight bottle. And when she was four and a half months old she was promoted to three meals a day.
During these first four and a half months of nocturnal disturbance, my husband and I learned to fall asleep as quickly as sailors on twenty-four hour a day duty. The minute the baby went to sleep we dived for our beds and slept fast, for we knew it would seem only a few minutes before the next job to be done. I say "my husband and I" advisedly, for he played as important a part in the baby’s care as I did. Realizing that I had two jobs on my hands my husband undertook to share the baby-job with me, and did it very well indeed. He learned all the mysteries of formula-making, bringing up bubbles, and diaper-changing, so that we alternated mornings in caring for the baby, each getting a turn at the extra hour of morning sleep before going off to work.
The working mother requires not only a super-husband, but something of a super-maid. Assuming the super-maid’s existence (and I was lucky enough to have one) the next step is a carefully-planned schedule. We had no room for our maid to sleep in, so until her arrival at 8:30, we had some pretty fancy dovetailing to manage. I rose at quarter to seven, prepared the baby’s breakfast, and while my husband picked her up and changed her, I dressed. While I fed her, he fixed our breakfast and after putting baby back to bed for her morning nap, I ate, grabbed my hat and dashed out of the house at 8:30 sharp. During baby’s morning nap the maid prepared the formula and got the housework started. Thanks to diaper service that was one problem she did not have to cope with.
Because we live in New York the twice-daily airing is more of a problem than for the lucky ones who have sunporches or back yards. From ten till twelve and from three to five the baby must get her sunshine and, of course, the maid must take her. So the two-hour nap after lunch releases the maid to complete her house work between airings.
At five-thirty I come breathlessly into the house and the maid gets to work on our dinner. Sometimes in the elevator of our apartment I startle the neighbors by removing beads, pins or anything else baby is likely to grab. I tear in, wash my hands, give baby her bath, and then her supper at six. We have a very brief few minutes for ourselves (this includes father, of course) and at seven she is tucked in for the night.
You can imagine that a schedule like this keeps a mother’s private life down to an absolute minimum. Saturdays and Sundays are all too short. If I take my Saturday afternoons for shopping or having my hair and nails done I’ve lost one precious afternoon with the baby. If I spent my Sundays stealing the extra rest I really need I’ve passed up on of my few chances to catch up with my daughter’s newest tricks.
So I do the only thing one can do under the circumstances, which is plan in advance and compromise a little. Looking well is an important part of my job, so every other Saturday afternoon belongs to the beauty parlor. Sundays my husband and I divide, so that mornings I go back to bed for a nap after baby’s breakfast while he takes her out – and afternoons he rests while I have her.
I understand from my doctor that it takes about a year after a baby is born for a woman to feel really right again. I judged that with my double job I should have double rest. So I manage to get nine or ten hours of sleep a night. That means that our evenings aren’t exactly full of "night life." And still, our life is by no means full. We manage a movie a week (though seldom together); we have friends to call and arrange to get out occasionally for joint evenings; we read vastly; we have our pet radio programs; we both find the time and the energy to write an occasional article at night.
Best of all I find in my work a stimulus that keeps me mentally alert, conversant with exciting new events, in contact with diversified people and not bounded on all four sides by baby! In other words I’m having my cake and eating it, for my interests include both the nursery and the business world with lots to gain from both.
I know my baby is healthy and happy, well-trained and keen. For the mother who works in an office knows the value and the mechanics of routine and routine is accepted as being one of the most important factors in bringing up a well-adjusted, healthy child. I have a feeling that the warm greeting she gives me when I come home at night is warmer still because I come from another world and am not taken for granted. And I am sure that we manage to crowd into our brief hours together "over-time" of fun to compensate for being "part-time" parents.
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Date: 2004-11-21 01:26 am (UTC)Three cheers for having a "super-maid"! :-) Now I'm envisioning a kind of costumed superhero in a French maid outfit with mask and cape... *g*