Horror stories!

[telophase]

Today's lunchtime reading: Homemaking for Teen-Agers, book 1 from 1955.

It starts with the child care section, aimed at making you a better big brother or sister (although, let's face it, the book is 99% aimed at girls). It mentions babysitting occasionally. What I find fascinating about it is that the authors have decided to go for the shock method of teaching in the first section about safety for children, by giving semi-lurid accounts of accidents. For example (spoiler-protecting if you're easily squicked by injuries):

The power-driven wringer on an electric washing machine may fascinate the six-year-old girl who loves to wash her dolly's clothes, so one day she attempts to put her washing through the wringer. Her inexperience litte hand is caught and dragged through the wringer up to her shoulder!

[...]

A little boy, playing around the room while his mother ironed on an electric ironer set the roller in motion and let his fingers get caught under the hot presser. Though his mother was not many feet away, his arm was drawn into the ironer to the elbow before she could come to his rescue!

The class project is to search the local paper for accounts of accidents to children, and write it up into a chart that provides name, age, type of accident, date, and whether it was at home, in the street, or in a public place. Every week, there is supposed to be a discussion period about the accidents of the previous week, wherein everyone decides what could have been done to prevent the accident - precautions, supervision and/or training of the child.

This is also the age of strictly regimented feedings of a baby: 6AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, 10 PM, and 2 AM. God help you if you're off by more than 15 minutes!

Also:

Babies at this age do not need a great variety of playthings, but one noise-maker should be included in every collection. A big wooden spoon or a metal pan cover is very satisfactory for banging on the floor. An aluminum pan on which to do the banging gives great joy to many lively little folk.

I suspect a pair of earplugs for the mother would be quite welcome by this point.

Farther along into the next section of the book, which is about sewing, we come upon another word that has changed its meaning slightly in the past fifty years:

Sleazy materials do not hold up well after laundering and frequently pull out at the seams.

Also:

When you choose a color for an apron, think how it will look with the dress over which you will wear it.

I don't know about you, but when I wear an apron I don't give a damn if it goes with my clothing or not, because I plan on taking it off before emerging from the house.* If anyone at home objects to my apron clashing with my clothing, they are free to LEAVE THE HOUSE.




* I really ought to get an apron, actually. I'm way too messy when I cook and have ruined more than one shirt with grease spots. The problem is remembering that I have one and remembering to put it on before I start cooking.

Comments

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

My grandmother was something of a socialite and threw a number of parties at her and my grandfather's house, before she got cancer. The idea of the apron matching the dress comes from wearing one over your party clothes when entertaining. Although that attitude did pretty much die out with my mother's generation.

[assume-a-virtue.livejournal.com]

My grandmother had two aprons; the one was blue-and-white check, and was meant for family, and the other one was gold, and I believe meant for company. Thank god my mother doesn't tend to cook messy things, and I wear shlumpy clothing when I cook things that are nutty.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Sleazy! Awesome.

I have a black and white apron from World Market that goes with EVERYTHING, nyah. But I don't remember to wear it unless I'm making something Explicitly Messy.

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

Those washers are scarey things D: We had one up until 2 years ago and was always warned to keep my hands away from the wringer.

And SLEAZY :D [but thoses kinda of things often need the most laundering D:]

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

They're not cheap, but I quite like my Williams & Sonoma apron. It's adjustable at the neck (which helps keep my chest covered, and the tapes are quite long enough.

there's also the candymaking apron, which is smeared from neck to knee in chocolate and food coloring. It's something of a unitasker.

[quartertofive.livejournal.com]

found via...er, not sure how at this point, but -

I used to work in a vaugely scout-like youth movement, that would see young people putting younger people in charge or extremely young people, and those are pretty much the exact health & safety education methods we'd use - scary descriptions to get attention, going over examples and breaking them down to learn to see the potential hazards in any situation, discussing ways to avoid them and forcing the guides to work out how to prevent them from happening with real situations in mind.

So, just to say, I don't find that methodology at all dated. Only we would use far, far more graphic language in describing the accidents today.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The "outdated cultural attitudes" tag is being used for all my home ec textbook reports. I really ought to make a new one, but it was appropriate for the first few. :D

What's interesting is that I've read a number of books ranging from the 1930s to the 1970s, and this is the only one using that tactic so far.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

The thing is, like polio, it is quite possible the kids reading this knew first or second-hand a family where this had happened. Heck, our neighbors' daughter got her hair caught in an electric mixer and that was not a happy moment. My own younger brother stuck his hand in one of those old-style push mowers because the moving blades were... interesting, and he wanted to stop them, and amputated a couple fingertips (rush to emergency room! and they bandaged the tips back on, they took, and you can hardly tell now what happened... forty years on).

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

When you choose a color for an apron, think how it will look with the dress over which you will wear it.

I don't know about you, but when I wear an apron I don't give a damn if it goes with my clothing or not, because I plan on taking it off before emerging from the house.* If anyone at home objects to my apron clashing with my clothing, they are free to LEAVE THE HOUSE.

They are talking about (da da dummmmm) the hostess apron.

These could be made of impractical things like gold lame or silk organza or lace. One still sees in the shops occasionally the hostess apron's descendants: wild Christmas aprons covered with splashy red poinsettias or insane holly arrangements.

The craft-girl-chic aprons I have seen on offer at ridiculous prices are generally of fairly classical hostess apron caliber also (small size, elaborately nice workmanship).

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I, too, ought to get an apron. And I, too, would probably forget I owned one and thus would only put it on AFTER ruining my clothing....

[wordkink.livejournal.com]

That story about the washer actually happened to my younger sister back in the early '90s when she was about 8 or 9, though she only got eaten up to her elbow. The machine hit that point and just started to spin before my uncle could hit the emergency release button. In the end she just had a crazy third degree burn, but no broken bones.

The event was at least enough to convince my uncle to buy my aunt a new washer.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I mentioned another story, that of a child who was running around with a glass baby bottle, fell, and cut her hand, to my co-worker, who told me that when he was 2, he broke his 20-year-old cousin's arm with a glass baby bottle. XD I've already forgotten the details.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Scheduled feedings: Helping us start early with eating disorders for decades!