Vintage Style Parenting: Photos Showing Parenting Choices That Wouldn’t Pass Today

Parenting has always been a rollercoaster ride, right? Sometimes, parents stumble upon the weirdest advice or goof up along the way.

But when you take a stroll down memory lane, you uncover some seriously wild ways people used to handle the whole parenting gig.

We all treasure those precious snapshots of our little ones having a blast at the beach or having a grand time in the park.

But take a gander at your parents’ old photo albums—guaranteed giggles await as you discover the old-school antics they were up to.

In today’s world, it feels like safety is a top priority with rules soaring sky-high. Yet, back in the day, kids crafted their own adventures, embraced more risks, and learned to fend for themselves.

Their parents didn’t have the abundance of modern parenting hacks stressing about safety and mistakes.

To pay tribute to the bygone days of parenting and their unique views on child safety, we’ve curated a delightful collection of vintage photos.

Get ready to witness parents and kids engaging in activities that would send shivers down the spines of today’s moms and dads. It’s a lighthearted journey through time, revealing just how much parenting has transformed!

“If your mum didn’t lay on the ground making herself into a ramp for your new BMX, did she even love you? 1980s”. (Photo credit: therealabv).

In Victorian times, many mothers didn’t nurse, feeding their babies by bottle instead. These bottles, state-of-the-art at the time, had a rubber nipple and thin rubber tubing. There were two problems: The rubber tubing was extremely difficult to clean, which made it a breeding ground for bacteria. On top of this, the advice at the time was that mothers only needed to wash the bottles every two to three weeks. Eventually, these baby bottles got a new nickname: “murder bottles.”

One of the more unusual trends from the early 1900s was the idea that babies needed to be given special baths to remove the waxy vernix that coated their skin in the womb. The conventional method to do this was to smear the baby in lard, butter, or olive oil.

Baby cages. As more families moved into dark and crowded tenement apartments during the Industrial Revolution, parents became concerned their young children weren’t getting enough sunlight or fresh air. The solution? Suspend them from cages installed on the outside of the building.