[light buzzing] [gentle music]
- [Henry] Remember back when saying a dirty word got you a
good, clean punishment?
[bleep]
- I have never seen him move as quickly
as he did than when he shoved a full bar
of Irish Spring into my mouth,
like putting a VHS tape into the machine.
It was just.
[commentator gargling]
- Or when drinking while pregnant was your doctor's idea?
- Doctors say that pregnant women should have a half pint
of beer every night.
- It got to the point where they would actually be handing
out these beers to women in the hospital.
[bright music]
- Or when a kid's balanced breakfast required
heaping piles of sugar?
- Every day started with a bowl of fruit loops
and eight scoops of sugar.
And my mom would be like, "How's your breakfast?"
And I'd be like, "Everything's great over here, mom."
- It was the golden age for being a kid.
Just sugar.
Enjoy.
- These are the things we used to do for fun, for money,
or maybe out of boredom that we'll never see again.
Were they dangerous?
Certainly.
Deadly?
Occasionally.
But boy, wasn't it exciting?
[music ends]
[logo swooshing]
[gentle music]
Every generation swears their parenting style
is the right one.
Today, that means buying sunscreen with an SPF higher
than your credit score.
But 100 years ago, parents were given very different advice
about kids and the sun.
- At the beginning of the 20th century,
many children develop something called Rickets,
which is a bone disease that stunts growth.
It leaves them with bent, wobbly legs.
- Scientists and doctors don't quite know
what's causing Rickets,
but kids in cities are getting Rickets way more
than kids in the country.
Plus, once a kid gets Rickets,
if they spend a lot of time outside,
they get better a lot faster.
- They believe it's because these kids
that are in cities aren't getting the same amount
of sunlight exposure.
So maybe sun is the big difference.
- [Lance] Physicians come up with a cheap and easy solution.
Put your baby in the sun.
- [Rutledge] Today, parents travel with everything to block
the sun, but in the '20's, they were just like, no.
No, just get 'em out there right out in the sun.
- [Dan] Everybody's so worried about the lack of sun for babies
that the US government dedicates an entire chapter
to sunbathing your baby in its official guide
to infant care.
- [Rutledge] Naked as the day they were born,
just out there soaking up rays on everything.
I can smell this kid's skin burning from here.
- [Lance] This manual is sent out to new parents,
and it's written by some
of the government's best physicians.
It gives you a list of do's and don'ts for sun care,
and among the do's is to start putting your baby
out in the sun at the age of just three weeks.
- [Henry] Doctors even suggest putting your baby
outside midday when the sun is hottest.
Just be sure to flip them halfway
through their tanning session, like a hamburger.
- [Lance] Parents are told, you'll know that it's working
if your child turns slightly red.
Or in other words, if they're still just a little pink,
leave them in the oven a little longer.
- [Henry] Of course, sun baths only work when it's sunny
and your child is outside.
So inventors have an idea.
Why not bring the sun indoors?
- A few years earlier, German researchers had invented
a new kind of lamp that runs electricity
through mercury vapors.
It's brighter and more efficient than traditional bulbs,
but there's a catch.
It gives off a huge amount of ultraviolet radiation.
- [Dan] That's when somebody realizes, maybe instead
of selling these as lamps, we could sell them
as artificial sunshine.
And just like that, artificial sun tanning was born.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] Doctors start prescribing UV lamps for all
sorts of stuff, acne, sunlamp.
I've got a bad back, sun lamp.
UV light feels like the future.
It's something that's really gonna help people.
- [Dan] Parents routinely send their kids
for treatment at these helio therapy wards.
Helios is just Greek for sun, so sun therapy.
- [Rutledge] They basically just load the kids into this room,
where they turn on this incredibly bright UV light,
put some black goggles over their eyes
so it doesn't blind them, and you just let your kids fry
like french fries.
You know, for their health.
- It looks like an illegal science experiment.
It looks like something that would not be happening
in the United States of America.
- [Dan] And you've got these parents who genuinely believe
that they're giving their kids the best care
they possibly can.
- [Rutledge] Doctors even found
a non-therapeutic use for these lamps.
At a hospital in Brooklyn, they started taking newborns,
and they would put their name on them,
and then use the UV light to basically brand their name
on the baby.
In their defense, it seemed like a great way
to make sure there wasn't these baby mixups.
- [Henry] Before long, UV therapy moves from the hospital
to the home.
- [Lance] By the 1930's, home UV lamps are being marketed to
parents as health essentials for kids.
Brush your teeth, comb your hair, sit under your lamp.
When an advertisement brags
that a model can turn the skin red in one minute,
this is about one 12th the time it would take you
if you were sitting on the beach in the middle of summer.
- [Kavitha] Another one claims to use a filter
that removes the harmful rays so that your kid can sit
or sleep under it for as long as they want.
- [Henry] While these lamps have a few bright spots,
it turns out these modern miracles can do more harm
than good.
- [Dan] These lamps are way too powerful.
10 seconds of over-exposure could cause a serious burn
with blistering and permanent skin damage,
not to mention upping the odds of getting skin cancer
in the long term.
- [Kavitha] The bulbs themselves are also a disaster waiting
to happen.
They burn incredibly hot, up to 1300 degrees,
and they contain pressurized mercury vapor.
- [Dan] If one overheats, it can shatter, sending glass fragments
and mercury flying all over the room.
[dramatic music] [glass tinkling]
Not ideal from a safety perspective.
- [Lance] Eventually, people start to figure out
it's not the sun itself that is curing
or preventing Rickets, it's the vitamin D that is derived
from being in the sun, and so they come up
with a much simpler solution.
They just start fortifying food with vitamin D.
The strategy is so effective that by 1945,
Rickets is essentially eliminated in the United States.
- Rickets wasn't the only disease
that kept parents up at night.
In the fight against tuberculosis in the early 1900s,
some parents literally went out on a limb.
- In tenements, in the earliest part of the 20th century,
people are living on top of other people,
and you have a perfect environment
for a deadly infection like TB to spread and kill people.
- Children are particularly susceptible to tuberculosis,
and so doctors begin to advocate, get fresh air
into these little lungs as much as possible.
- They say go in your yard, or go on the porch,
but if you live on the fourth floor
of a crowded city apartment or tenement, that doesn't exist.
- [Henry] So inventors come up with a creative solution
that gives kids fresh air at high altitudes.
- You can turn your window into a balcony with a baby cage.
- A baby cage.
It's essentially this wire mesh cube that sits
outside your window, hangs over the street,
and the idea is, you throw your baby in there with a blanket
and some toys, and you say, hey, enjoy getting fresh air
for the next hour or two.
- [Natalia] In the 1910s '20s,
these health window cribs are really popular.
They're considered the cutting edge of child safety.
- [Negin] I have a kid in New York City,
and there are so many protections
so that the child does not come anywhere near falling
outside of a window.
The idea that at the time they would just be like,
throw your kid on this makeshift chicken coop,
which is crazy. [chuckling]
- [Henry] Surely there must have been some rules
and regulations about this, right?
- [Jason] Today, installing anything,
even like a simple air conditioner, requires all sorts
of special equipment, regulations,
brackets, weight limits.
100 years ago, completely different story.
There was really kind of no regulations.
- [Henry] So do you spring for the top
of the line baby cage model?
Or go a different, cheaper direction?
- [Adam] If you bought a pre-made baby cage,
it would be the modern equivalent of $600.
People who live in tenements can't possibly afford that,
and they need the baby cages the most.
So they end up going DIY, and they find a way
to make their own baby cages.
- [Jason] Crafting their own baby cage with stuff they picked
up at the hardware store.
This is DIY parenting 1915 style.
- [Henry] A homemade cage suspended dozens of feet
in the air, held a loft by only a few screws.
What could go wrong?
- [Adam] If that toddler starts playing and rolling around,
well, that's putting more stress and more strain,
not on the cage itself,
but on the things that are holding it
to the side of the building.
So that window frame breaks, that wood gives way,
that wire warps or bends, a screw pops,
and down comes baby, baby cage and all.
- [Natalia] Believe it or not, baby cages stick around
until the 1950s, and the reason that they go away is not
because of safety concerns about the cages themselves,
but because the TB vaccine shows up,
so people have another way to protect their kids.
- Today, we still want our kids to get fresh air,
but it's mostly to get them off the screens.
And we also prefer to keep them at ground level.
- Today, car seats are a billion dollar industry,
and they're required until your kids are almost old enough
to drive.
But back in the day, we weren't concerned
about keeping kids safe.
We wanted to keep them out of our hair.
- As a child, driving in the car
with your parents on a road trip is something
that every family experiences,
and in the 1930s, there are big questions about
what do you do with the kids in the car?
- [Rutledge] There's no safety standards yet.
So the basic seatbelt was just a mom's arm.
Just, okay, hold on.
We're slowing down.
[gentle music]
- You wanted your kids where you could see them,
where you could keep them safe.
For families with babies, the answer was simple.
You're upfront on mom's lap, or wedged between mom and dad
on the bench seat.
- [Rutledge] Toddlers though are a little bit tricky,
because they're in that space and time
where they just wanna to explore constantly.
They're gonna get into something all the time.
- [Natalia] For a toddler, a car is like a jungle gym on wheels,
so they're gonna be grabbing the steering wheel,
probably grabbing that cigarette lighter,
just generally wreaking havoc in a very high risk space.
- [Henry] In the 1930s, a new product
offers the ideal solution not
to safely secure your roaming toddlers,
but to restrain them.
- [Martin] In 1933, a company called Bunny Bear
introduces a child restraint system.
The first model is basically a folding lawn chair
with some straps to hold the child into it.
- [Natalia] Parents love this because for the first time,
kids are restrained just like the ads promised.
Some of these little chairs actually come
with a little steering wheel so the kid can pretend
like they're driving.
It creates almost like a game out of it.
- [Martin] It even had a little horn in the middle
[horn honking]
where you could beep, beep and honk at traffic.
It was a company's way of figuring out how
to make toddlers more annoying.
- [Henry] Early car seats are a delight
for kids and parents until you have to make a sudden stop.
[tires screeching]
- It's not latched into the car,
there are no seat belts to attach it to.
In a screeching halt, the kid will hit something.
- [Commercial Announcer] What if this had been Nancy?
- [Martin] God forbid, you should stop short at some point.
Ah, but wait, you've got your father's right arm
to save the day.
- [Don] By the 1940s, a new model comes out with these
clamps that hook onto the seat back.
- [Rutledge] It's basically a small basket with two holes cut
out for legs that's then hooked to the seat.
So if there's any sort of impact like,
that thing's just gonna go flying.
- [Henry] As time goes by, some entrepreneurs think,
"Hey, maybe we get rid of the seat part all together."
- [Natalia] In 1961, you get the auto strap,
and that's almost like a harness leash thing
that attaches the kid to the seat, but they're not seated.
They can just run around.
It's just short enough that they can't get in the way
of the driver.
- [Rutledge] Imagine you have a tether ball set up
in the backseat.
of your car with like four foot of rope, and just the ball.
So if you hit something,
it's still gonna bounce all over the place. [chuckling]
But you'll at least be like, oh, there's Tommy.
- [Austin] Then there's the baby hammock,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
A basket with a mesh suspended from the car ceiling
that will gently rock with the automobile's motion.
It'll also violently bang the kid back
and forth if there is a sudden stop.
- [Don] Finally, in 1971,
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sets
the first federal standards for child restraints.
Folding chairs and ceiling hammocks are out.
Hard plastic shells, seat belts, anchoring car seats
and harnesses within car seats are in.
- [Rutledge] In a real short amount of time,
we went from zero child safety standards in a car,
to now you gotta replace a kid's seat
like every three years.
That's pretty wild.
- Just when American cars started to strap down the kids,
another vehicle rolled in and said, hey, what if we didn't?
- [Don] When you picture the ultimate 20th century
family car,
you probably picture a station wagon, or maybe a minivan.
But in the 1970s, another type of car
quietly becomes a favorite with American parents.
The pickup truck.
- [Henry] From 1970 to 1978, sales
of pickup trucks nearly double,
and the pickup truck becomes the hottest selling vehicle
in America.
- The problem with the pickup truck as a family vehicle is
that the cab only has space for three people in the front,
two adults and a kid maybe.
So what are you gonna do if you have a big family
with multiple kids?
[bright music]
Fortunately, the pickup truck has an entire other section
that's even bigger than the cab, and that is the bed.
- Technically, that truck bed is designed
for hauling things like lumber and gravel, but in the 1970s,
there are virtually no laws whatsoever
about putting your kids in the truck bed and taking off
down the highway.
- Being a kid, riding in the back
of the pickup truck was a load of fun.
Just think how fun it is to just put your hand
out the window and feel the wind.
Your whole body is out of the cab now!
- During these times, there are child restraint laws,
but they only apply to seats.
And because there's no seats in the back of pickup trucks,
there's a loophole.
You can ride back there.
- [Henry] Soon the truck bed becomes the mass transit
of country living.
- [Hakeem] Growing up in rural America,
I did a lot of truck bed riding.
Every community had a softball and baseball team.
So how are you gonna move a team worth of people?
Everybody piled up in the back of the pickup truck.
And you know what was really fun when everybody was
in the back of the pickup truck?
Driving crazy.
And you were just held on, woo!
- [Lance] We were just left in the back of a pickup truck
rolling down the highway when I was three or four years old,
nobody supervising us.
- [Hakeem] At this time, drunk driving wasn't thought of
the way it is right now.
You know what else was often in the back with you?
The cooler of beer.
So it was not unusual to pass your dad a cold beer
from the back.
- [Henry] And many even turn their trucks
into bucking broncos.
- [Hakeem] There's a thing that people used
to do called tailgate surfing, where they attach a rope
to the cab, and they stand back there in the bed
of the truck kind of surfing around.
- While the person's driving, you're being slung around,
and you've got to hold on for dear life, or get thrown over.
- [Don] So here's the catch.
These vehicles were designed for cargo, not for people.
One sudden swerve or a bad pothole, a hard break,
and those passengers are sent airborne.
- [Lance] As traffic and roads get busier, in the 1970s and
1980s, accidents involving people in the truck bed start
to get much more common, especially among teenagers.
- [Don] One of the worst incidents is in 1979.
A pickup carrying 12 teens, eight in the back, is on its way
to a party in Maryland and gets into an accident.
10 of those kids do not survive.
- [Henry] Because of these accidents,
about half the states placed restrictions
on truck bed riding, and a few ban it almost entirely.
- [Don] On one hand, you understand the safety
requirements, but on the other hand, the freedom and the
feeling of danger was part of it,
and that exhilaration was irreplaceable.
- These days, if you wanna feel the wind in your hair out
on the road, you have to roll down the window.
- A lot of us know that the most delicate phase
of parenting happens before a baby is born.
But in the 1950s, doctors had some relaxed ideas
about what to do during pregnancy.
- [Austin] In the 1950s, cigarette smoking isn't
rebellious or even disgusting.
It's classy, it's refined.
Nearly half of American adults smoke,
and cigarettes are endorsed in magazine ads
and on television by actual doctors.
- Stress, you feeling stressed?
have a cigarette.
Weight gain?
Have a cigarette, you'll eat less.
You're feeling anxiety?
Have a cigarette.
- And that advice extends to pregnant women.
If you wanna avoid cravings, if you're a little bit anxious
about what's growing inside you, just have a cigarette!
- Pregnancy leads to hormonal changes, which leads
to weird food cravings.
And doctors were like, dude, have a cigarette.
Nicotine is an appetite suppressant,
and doctors were basically prescribing
their pregnant patients to light up, you know? [chuckling]
Just suppress that appetite.
They were just like, it's undignified
to gain so much weight in pregnancy.
- [Edward] In 1966, "Williams Obstetrics",
the leading textbook
for OBGYN doctors says that it's okay for a woman
to smoke up to 10 cigarettes a day, which is half a pack.
- At this point, 10 cigarettes per day was seen as,
quote, innocuous for a pregnant woman.
Just to see it in print, is like a different level
of reality.
- [Martin] I know for a fact that my mother smoked while
pregnant with me, and in fact, I was told stories of
how my mother was pumping gas pregnant with me
while smoking a cigarette.
- [Rutledge] Not only do doctors condone smoking,
but also when they're taking the cart around the hospital
with the snacks, and the sandwiches where,
there's also packs of cigarettes on there
if you wanna buy some.
Just light up in the hospital.
[bright music]
- [Henry] Only a few years later, doctors
and hospitals changed their tune on lighting up.
- [Martin] By the 1970s, the research is undeniable.
The harmful effects of tobacco smoke cross the placenta
and affect the child.
- [Austin] Babies of smokers face higher risks
across the board.
So by the 1980s, US law requires a Surgeon General's warning
against the dangers of smoking while pregnant.
- We're not smoking cigarettes now when we're giving birth,
we're not even eating soft cheeses.
That's how much the medical establishment has changed
on this issue.
- Smoking wasn't the only advice doctors gave pregnant women
that would raise eyebrows today.
They also had a few other ideas.
- [Kavitha] As hard as pregnancy is today, it's especially
grueling in the early 1900s.
It's a time when medical options
and nutritional supplements are pretty limited.
- [Lance] Doctors start to look for a nutritional supplement
for pregnant women, and they find it from a strange source.
Beer.
Especially dark beer.
- [Edward] Dark beer is a particular favorite,
because it actually has things like iron,
and also it's made with a lot of barley.
So there is nutritional value that comes out of dark beer,
leading people to actually refer to beer as liquid bread.
I mean, that's a bit of an exaggeration,
but only by a little bit.
- Doctors say that pregnant women should have a half pint
of beer every night.
- [Brian] It got to the point where they would actually be
handing out these half beers to women in the hospital.
I'm just saying if I was a woman, I might make the argument
to get off my back, and let me have the half a beer.
- [Natalia] It's unreal, Beer Garden as labor ward.
- [Henry] And once the baby is born,
it's not a last call for beer.
Doctors deem it even more essential.
- [Natalia] Barley is considered to boost milk production for
moms who are breastfeeding.
So after birth, mothers are recommended to keep drinking
to keep the milk flowing.
The beer industry really leans into this idea
that beer is healthy.
They're advertising mothers and babies posing with beer,
drinking it.
- [Lance] The ad I remember suggests that,
if you've got a mother who's breastfeeding, keep a case
of Blatz around the house to help bring in the milk.
So Blatz for your...
For your new mother. [chuckling]
- [Henry] And beer makers decide, if beer is good
for nursing mothers, it must be great for kids.
- [Brian] Now you follow that chain of logic of beer
being healthy.
to let's give the children these newborn children some beer.
Again, it's got all the healthy ingredients in it.
And there's a little bonus on it too.
It's like the kids would fall dead asleep.
Now we call that passing out.
- [Henry] Dark beer remains on the menu for mothers
and children into the 1960s,
but eventually, studies kill the buzz.
- [Natalia] By the 1970s, it's confirmed
that alcohol actually does cross the placenta,
and it affects the brain development of children.
So those days are over.
- [Kavitha] In 1981, the Surgeon General
officially advises pregnant women not to drink,
and then in 1989,
alcoholic beverages must carry a warning label
for pregnancy risk.
- Thank goodness today, hospitals no longer serve beer
to new moms, but dad can still get his pint at the bar
across the street.
- Parents today obsess over everything
that their kids eat, from sweets to processed foods.
But there was a time when a spoonful
of sugar helped the medicine go down.
And 10 spoonfuls?
Well, that was just the way you started your day.
[crowd cheering]
- After World War II, Americans become obsessed with energy,
and there's this widely held belief
that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
That's where you get your energy from.
But busy mornings, suburban commutes, school buses, all
of this means it has gotten harder and harder for parents
to give their kids the breakfast they need.
- [Brian] And scientists come up with this brilliant solution,
and the government fully endorses it.
Let's give these kids sugar.
[bright music]
- [Commercial Announcer] Sugar helped in war.
Sugar now plays its part in peace.
Keep sharing it.
- If sugar can bring strength and energy to soldiers
in the battlefield, it must be good enough
for growing children.
And that is where breakfast cereal companies come in.
- [Narrator] Sugar Crisps tumble through sugar and honey,
and comes up tasting like 101 sweet buns.
Sugar Crisp!
- [Jason] By the 1950s, some of these cereals have more
than 50% sugar by weight.
They've got names like Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops,
Sugar Crisp, and they've got mascots like the Sugar Bear.
Sugar is not something they're trying to hide,
it is the selling point.
[dramatic music]
- Big industry is suddenly putting information out saying
that sugar is good for you.
Slogans like, "Sugar puts the muscle power in sweetness."
Another ad says "How to breakfast?
Sugar's got what it takes."
- Every day of my life started with a bowl of Fruit Loops
and eight scoops of sugar.
And my mom in the kitchen would be like,
"How's your breakfast?"
And I'd be like, "Everything's great over here, mom."
[charming music]
- [Jason] The sugar train doesn't even stop
with breakfast.
For lunch, send your kid to school with a marshmallow fluff
and peanut butter sandwich, and when he gets home
from dinner, serve him up some meat glazed with sugar
with a side of jello salad with whipped cream dolloped
right on top.
- [Henry] By the time many 1950s kids leave for school,
they've already consumed what today would be an entire day's
worth of sugar.
But that decades long sugar rush soon comes crashing down.
- [Martin] By the '80s and '90s,
there's an across the board recognition for the fact
that sugar provides energy, but it sticks around.
It sticks around in the system and causes lots
of bad things like obesity and diabetes.
- [Adam] So people need to cut back sugar, and advertising
and marketing companies want to reign in sugar
when it comes to branding.
So sugar Smacks become Honey Smacks,
Sugar Crisp becomes Golden Crisp.
- Divorced of the knowledge that it's bad for you,
it was the golden age for a kid.
Just sugar, enjoy.
- Back in the '50s, parents poured on the sugar
at every meal.
By the 1970s, they were pouring something else
for their teenagers, and then handing them the car keys.
- [Rutledge] In 1971, after years of protest, the voting age
drops from 21 to 18, and that was really based around the idea
of Vietnam, that if you're old enough to die
for this country, you ought to be old enough to vote.
But then that posed the question,
well, if you're old enough to vote,
shouldn't you be old enough to drink?
- [Austin] And a lot of states agreed.
By 1973, 16 states lower the drinking age to 18.
In many states for the first time since before Prohibition,
a teenager can get a drink at a bar.
- [Henry] And here's the twist, a lot of parents approve.
- [Brian] Largely these parents were on board.
We know where they are, they're down at the pub,
they're safe.
This was just the American attitude back then.
- [Rutledge] So for business owners, this is pretty great.
I mean, they just have to sort of rethink the mind of an 18
to a 20-year-old, and really cater to that,
and that's where the idea comes from.
Maybe we should design teen bars.
- [Hakeem] So the decor and the layout of the bars start to
favor what kids like.
They add pinball machines, they gamify the drinking process.
Where you drink 10 long necks, you're now in the club.
- [Rutledge] In Minnesota, a place called the Beaver Pond
says, "Oh, you know what these teens really need?
a beer first thing in the morning."
So they do breakfast beers.
- [Brian] We may poo poo the idea of drunk 18 year olds
running around today, but back then,
even the colleges were all for it.
They opened up bars on campus to make money selling it
to their own students.
- [Rutledge] The staff at the University of Montana decided
to do a keg party, and they said $5 unlimited beer.
And they raised $400,000 for the library.
It's pretty genius!
That's a ton of beer.
- [Henry] Parents, educators and local businesses
all raise a glass to the legal teenagers.
But younger drinkers come with consequences.
- [Hakeem] I was once 18,
and one thing I know is that
when you're an 18-year-old dude, you're dumb as hell.
Your priorities are not in the right place.
- [Rutledge] In this era, there are a ton of bar fights.
There's just mayhem in the streets.
In fact, one weekend at the Jersey shore,
100 kids were arrested for drunken shenanigans.
- [Austin] Drunk driving arrests soar nationwide.
In just Michigan alone, DUI rates double from when
before the drinking age was lowered.
And by 1984, President Ronald Reagan says he will
withhold federal highway funding to any state
that does not revert to a 21 plus drinking age.
- The teen bars that were serving alcohol start
to disappear, the highways become safer,
and these hooligans are reigned in.
- [Brian] I remember people still complaining about the fact
that they were able to legally drink at one point,
and then it got taken away from them.
And then I started feeling ripped off
that I wasn't gonna be able to drink at 18,
even though I was only 10.
- Legal teenage drinking, let's just say it aged quickly.
- Parenthood comes with some beautiful memories,
but the pain of childbirth,
that's one memory moms would like to forget.
Well, in the early 1900s, doctors came up with a way
for women to give birth without remembering any of it.
The memory loss was intentional.
The consequences were not.
- [Natalia] Throughout history, childbirth is this incredibly
painful and gross experience.
[baby crying]
So in 1906, two German doctors decide it doesn't have
to be this way.
They want to take the pain and horror out of childbirth.
- [Lance] They come up with what they see to be a
miracle solution.
A cocktail, a mix of drugs
that can make labor virtually painless.
- [Natalia] The way this works is that when a mother is
unconscious, her body can still work to push out the baby.
- [Henry] Doctors call it twilight sleep.
- [Negin] Put yourself in the shoes of these people in the
1910s, and doctors are saying there's this safe way
of giving birth, and it's without pain.
You get a couple of injections,
you kind of like fall asleep,
you wake up to a beautiful baby,
and there's no memory of the stuff that happened in between.
it sounds like a spa day!
- [Lance] The press were calling it a wonder, a new hope,
a new era for motherhood.
And the parents love it.
- [Henry] But what actually makes
this twilight sleep possible?
- So they use this cocktail of morphine and scopolamine.
Morphine helps with the pain, and scopolamine is capable
of putting people in a state to where it's almost
like the lights are on but nobody's home.
It also impairs memory as well.
- One doctor describes it as uncoupling the brain
from the spinal cord.
- [Henry] But for many young mothers,
choosing twilight sleep may turn out to be a nightmare.
- [J Mack] Too much scopolamine causes temporary insanity.
You reach this state to where you're hallucinating,
you're seeing things around you, you're moving around,
you're trying to grab things in midair.
- [Natalia] The result is that some patients get really
violent, they start to fight the staff, they thrash around,
they try to run away.
- [Henry] And the doctors show restraint,
but not the kind you want.
- [J Mack] Before they end up
administering these different drugs,
they blindfold the women, they put them in these sleeves
that wrap around to the back of the body.
I mean, it's a straight jacket.
- The beds where women lie for this have these raised sides,
and they're knotted shut with sheets.
Really looks like some sort of restraining device you'd find
in an insane asylum at the time.
- [Lance] There are even cases where a woman gives birth
and everything seems fine, and then a few days later,
they lose their minds.
This is painless childbirth every time.
It's a roll of the die.
- [Henry] Despite the obvious risks,
twilight births stick around well into the 1960s,
when a big push for natural birth takes over.
- [J Mack] And nowadays, we have epidurals,
which is arguably the best combination of pain relief,
plus keeping mother alert, and aware,
and able to help
remember that experience.
- Having a baby is one thing.
Getting it to sleep we all know is another.
Well, in the 1950s,
one famous doctor claimed he had the answer,
and it wasn't so much how, but where.
- [Don] In 1957, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the most famous
pediatrician and parenting expert in America, tells parents
not to waste their money on a beautiful bassinet lined
with silk.
- [Edward] Dr. Spock is all about keep it simple.
All these fancy thing, you don't need that.
Babies don't care.
Babies want, you know, a secure space in which to sleep.
Anything can be rigged up to be a decent,
perfectly fine place for a child to sleep.
- [Henry] Need a place for your infant to sleep?
How about a grocery box, a crate or a dresser drawer?
- Postwar America is full of wooden crates and milk boxes,
so people are using these to make baby beds.
- [Brian] Most people's furniture are fairly sturdy.
It's a box, you line it with some towels and stuff,
you put your kid there.
That's essentially what a crib is anyway.
- [Kavitha] It's not just Dr. Spock.
Federal infant care guides at the time also say
that a baby would be just fine in a clothes basket
or a wooden box.
- [Jason] If you're crafty, the US Children's Bureau
actually recommends a DIY project called the chair cot.
You push two chairs together, and forms a little platform,
and then you wrap that thing in a sheet,
you secure that sheet with 10 safety pins,
and then all of a sudden you've got your little chair cot.
It's easy.
- [Henry] One hospital even takes babies in drawers
to the Space Age.
- [Don] Kaiser Permanente Hospital in California even
installs permanent slide out metal drawers next to mom's bed.
It's like a baby filing cabinet with easy access
for feeding.
- [Henry] The Kaiser Hospital reached the height
of baby in drawer technology.
But once babies leave the hospital, it's back
to the milk crate or dresser drawer.
- [Brian] Look, will it work? Yes.
Will it probably be okay? Yes.
Doesn't mean it's a great idea.
- [Kavitha] By the 1970s, research shows that safe baby
sleep requires unobstructed airflow at all times,
and a dresser drawer doesn't deliver that,
because they're lined, and they trap heat
and carbon dioxide.
- [Jason] Dresser drawers are particularly risky.
There are actually anecdotes
of frazzled parents shutting the dresser drawer
with their child inside, and them not realizing it,
only becoming aware when the baby starts crying.
Pretty terrifying actually.
[pensive music]
- [Don] In 1973, pediatricians begin pushing
for dedicated cribs with slats and ventilation.
Mass production makes them affordable,
and DIY baby beds quietly disappear.
- These days, cribs come with breathable materials.
Are they safer?
Absolutely.
But you gotta admit a bit more complicated
than just opening a drawer.
- Back in the day, parents were pretty relaxed
about seat belts and sugar, you name it.
But bad language, that's where they drew the line.
It led to one of childhood's most iconic punishments.
Effective? Maybe.
Dangerous? Definitely.
[charming music]
- [Hakeem] In the 1950s, cleanliness is all the rage.
Clean houses, clean lawns, clean cars, clean reputations.
- [Don] This is the golden age of soap.
TV is crammed with sparkling bath commercials.
- [Commercial Announcer] No soap cleans so clean
as Vel Beauty Bar.
- [Jason] Soap companies sponsor entire TV shows, giving rise
to the soap opera.
Soap Companies are pushing this idea
that soap isn't just about cleanliness,
it's about moral character.
- Cleanliness is close to Godliness,
is close to Americanness.
- If a child uses profanity,
it's a negative reflection on the family,
and there is no greater sin in the 1950s
than making your family look bad.
- [Hakeem] So if a child were to drop a swear word,
parents reach for something to clean out their mouth,
and that was a bar of soap.
- [Martin] For a child, this is a great humiliation,
because you have soap shoved in your mouth,
which is an unpleasant thing to experience.
And then even after the soap is removed from your mouth,
soap is stuck in your teeth,
and so it doesn't go away immediately,
and you get that gross, soapy taste in your mouth.
It lasts for a few hours,
and you're left with the longing sensation of,
I wish I had not used that word,
at least not in front of the parents.
- My dad was an athlete, a black belt in Judo, whatever.
I have never seen him move as swiftly
or as quickly as he did than when he shoved a full bar
of Irish Spring into my mouth, like putting a VHS tape
into the machine.
It was just. [gargling]
I mean, I guess I gotta be grateful it wasn't Brillow
or Easy Off.
- [Jason] This punishment is everywhere in pop culture.
It's mentioned in "Leave It to Beaver",
it's referenced in "The Brady Bunch",
in "A Christmas Story",
the lead character actually becomes a connoisseur
of the different soap bars.
Topps, the baseball card company, actually comes out
with a soap parody of Jergens called Jerkens, which is
for cleaning up dirty words.
- [Adam] It doesn't just happen on TV, and it doesn't just
happen at the home, it happens at schools.
There's several cases
of teachers washing students' mouths
out with soap at school.
Apparently in one case, the word was as benign as "jackass".
- [Jason] School Boards say that the teachers did nothing wrong,
mouth washing isn't illegal, and this is an important part
of the teacher's disciplinarian kit.
Teachers at other schools all agree with the decision.
- If you did that today, oh my God, you would get hauled
before a jury, 'cause that would, I think, be recognized
as abusive to a child today.
Back then, this was an everyday punishment meted out
at home and at school.
- [Don] Parents underestimate these products,
because there are no warning labels on the packaging.
I mean, why would you need one?
No one's supposed to eat soap, except in this era.
- Today, most bath soaps, hand soaps,
and even dish soaps that we use are designed
to be non-irritating, and the way they accomplish this is
by making them pH balanced.
The soap's pH matches that of the human skin.
But that wasn't always the case.
- [Don] Post-war soaps are industrial strength grime
fighters with high pH designed to strip grease off dishes,
and oil off hands.
- [Hakeem] That soap is actually dissolving
the protective tissues
in their mouth and digestive tract.
So if you swallow a little bit,
there could be vomiting and diarrhea.
It's not just a bad taste.
Chemical reactions are going to occur,
and they're going to be aggressive.
- [Martin] I was taken to see my grandmother at one point,
during which I used some word.
I don't know what word I used, but it was bad enough
for her to drag me to the kitchen, and she put dish soap
in my mouth.
And so I ended up swallowing some of it,
which made me sick for the rest of the night.
- [Adam] By 1961, there had been so many cases
of children ingesting cleaning products,
that they have actually created
a National Poison Prevention Week.
There are poison consumption hotlines that parents can call.
- [Hakeem] And it doesn't take a leap of imagination to realize
that if you shouldn't be drinking Windex,
you probably shouldn't be sticking a bar
of soap in your kids' mouth.
- [Jason] School districts now ban mouth washing.
So groundings replace glycerin,
and the bar of soap quietly returns to the sink.
[gentle music]
- [Adam] But this happened to me.
This happened to a lot of people I know, and it didn't work.
And if anything, I curse too much.
- As we look back at how parents used to raise us,
whether leaving us out in the sun, stuffing us in drawers,
or letting us bounce around in the back of the pickup truck,
what didn't hurt us, made us stronger.
And that's why our hazardous history is one for the ages.
[dramatic music]