Vintage 365: 1940s ad reminds parents not to leave their babies alone aside while they go shopping

? Day 29 of Vintage 365 ?

 

How often have you heard people of our grandparent's (or parents, depending on your own age) generation refer to the mid-20th century as "simpler times"? Despite the intense hardships our grandparents and great-grandparents enduring during the Great Depression, WW2, and the aftermath of rebuilding much of the globe and getting the economy back on track after the second world war, in my experience, many people that I've spoken to who were alive during these years found them to times that they looked back on with fondness and reverence.

Yes, life was complicated in many ways (hasn't it always been in one capacity or another though?), but it was also wonderful - and perhaps indeed, simpler. Back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s children were not only generally allowed to play outside sans adult supervision, they were expected to. Communities were often more tightly knit, folks knew and spent time with their neighbours, and as a whole society was a more trusting place.

However, even in these seemingly safe times, the (US) National Safety Council still felt it best to remind people periodically about certain practices that they felt were best to be avoided, such as leaving your baby outside in its stroller/pram when popping inside a shop (as the ad above, which comes via Captain Geoffrey Spaulding's Flickr stream shows). Lest your jaw drop at the mere thought, I can assure you that in talking to my grandparents and various elderly neighbours over the years, that this practise (which is still done in some parts of the world) was once very common (especially in smaller towns).

Today many would shudder at the notion of leaving their baby or young child unattended in public for even so much as one red second, and (for better or worse) that may indeed by far be the safest approach in these unpredictable times. Yet back in the 40s when this National Safety Council ad ran across America, such practises were viewed as completely normal. I think that people were more trusting of each other in those days; the unthinkable idea that someone could kidnap your baby from its stroller was simply not one that many dared to entertain.

However, as time rolled on and (whether in reality or merely perception) the world began to be viewed as a less safe, more hostile environment, mothers stopped leaving their children outside when the went into shops (the advent of shopping carts with seats for children to sit in as mother shopped was also no doubt part of the reason less babies were left outdoors), and today the idea seeing an ad such as this one would surely seem comical to most.

Yet, as my grandmother is fond of saying - and I really do believe - those were simpler, better times when men still tipped their hats to ladies, borrowing a cup of sugar from the family next door was commonplace, and babies really did wait outside stores as their mother's did the weekly shopping.

Source: http://www.chronicallyvintage.com/2011/01/vintage-365-1940s-ad-reminds-parents.html

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