Original subtitles

Remember back when saying a dirty word got you a

good, clean punishment?

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.

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.

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?

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.

Physicians come up with a cheap and easy solution.

Put your baby in the sun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Parents routinely send their kids

for treatment at these helio therapy wards.

Helios is just Greek for sun, so sun therapy.

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.

And you've got these parents who genuinely believe

that they're giving their kids the best care

they possibly can.

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.

Before long, UV therapy moves from the hospital

to the home.

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.

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.

While these lamps have a few bright spots,

it turns out these modern miracles can do more harm

than good.

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.

The bulbs themselves are also a disaster waiting

to happen.

They burn incredibly hot, up to 1300 degrees,

and they contain pressurized mercury vapor.

If one overheats, it can shatter, sending glass fragments

and mercury flying all over the room.

Not ideal from a safety perspective.

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.

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.

In the 1910s '20s,

these health window cribs are really popular.

They're considered the cutting edge of child safety.

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.

Surely there must have been some rules

and regulations about this, right?

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.

So do you spring for the top

of the line baby cage model?

Or go a different, cheaper direction?

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.

Crafting their own baby cage with stuff they picked

up at the hardware store.

This is DIY parenting 1915 style.

A homemade cage suspended dozens of feet

in the air, held a loft by only a few screws.

What could go wrong?

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.

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?

There's no safety standards yet.

So the basic seatbelt was just a mom's arm.

Just, okay, hold on.

We're slowing down.

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.

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.

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.

In the 1930s, a new product

offers the ideal solution not

to safely secure your roaming toddlers,

but to restrain them.

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.

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.

It even had a little horn in the middle

where you could beep, beep and honk at traffic.

It was a company's way of figuring out how

to make toddlers more annoying.

Early car seats are a delight

for kids and parents until you have to make a sudden stop.

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.

What if this had been Nancy?

God forbid, you should stop short at some point.

Ah, but wait, you've got your father's right arm

to save the day.

By the 1940s, a new model comes out with these

clamps that hook onto the seat back.

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.

As time goes by, some entrepreneurs think,

"Hey, maybe we get rid of the seat part all together."

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.

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.

But you'll at least be like, oh, there's Tommy.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

Soon the truck bed becomes the mass transit

of country living.

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!

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.

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.

And many even turn their trucks

into bucking broncos.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because of these accidents,

about half the states placed restrictions

on truck bed riding, and a few ban it almost entirely.

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.

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?

Just suppress that appetite.

They were just like, it's undignified

to gain so much weight in pregnancy.

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.

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.

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.

Only a few years later, doctors

and hospitals changed their tune on lighting up.

By the 1970s, the research is undeniable.

The harmful effects of tobacco smoke cross the placenta

and affect the child.

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.

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.

Doctors start to look for a nutritional supplement

for pregnant women, and they find it from a strange source.

Beer.

Especially dark beer.

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.

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.

It's unreal, Beer Garden as labor ward.

And once the baby is born,

it's not a last call for beer.

Doctors deem it even more essential.

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.

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.

And beer makers decide, if beer is good

for nursing mothers, it must be great for kids.

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.

Dark beer remains on the menu for mothers

and children into the 1960s,

but eventually, studies kill the buzz.

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.

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.

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.

And scientists come up with this brilliant solution,

and the government fully endorses it.

Let's give these kids sugar.

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.

Sugar Crisps tumble through sugar and honey,

and comes up tasting like 101 sweet buns.

Sugar Crisp!

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

And here's the twist, a lot of parents approve.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Parents, educators and local businesses

all raise a glass to the legal teenagers.

But younger drinkers come with consequences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Throughout history, childbirth is this incredibly

painful and gross experience.

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.

They come up with what they see to be a

miracle solution.

A cocktail, a mix of drugs

that can make labor virtually painless.

The way this works is that when a mother is

unconscious, her body can still work to push out the baby.

Doctors call it twilight sleep.

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!

The press were calling it a wonder, a new hope,

a new era for motherhood.

And the parents love it.

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.

But for many young mothers,

choosing twilight sleep may turn out to be a nightmare.

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.

The result is that some patients get really

violent, they start to fight the staff, they thrash around,

they try to run away.

And the doctors show restraint,

but not the kind you want.

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.

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.

Despite the obvious risks,

twilight births stick around well into the 1960s,

when a big push for natural birth takes over.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One hospital even takes babies in drawers

to the Space Age.

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.

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.

Look, will it work? Yes.

Will it probably be okay? Yes.

Doesn't mean it's a great idea.

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.

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.

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.

In the 1950s, cleanliness is all the rage.

Clean houses, clean lawns, clean cars, clean reputations.

This is the golden age of soap.

TV is crammed with sparkling bath commercials.

No soap cleans so clean

as Vel Beauty Bar.

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.

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.

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.

I mean, I guess I gotta be grateful it wasn't Brillow

or Easy Off.

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.

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".

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.

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.

Post-war soaps are industrial strength grime

fighters with high pH designed to strip grease off dishes,

and oil off hands.

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.

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.

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.

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.

School districts now ban mouth washing.

So groundings replace glycerin,

and the bar of soap quietly returns to the sink.

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.