Question: Should my baby be handled?
Answer: Babies are like delicate plants, and should be brought up in as pure an atmosphere and with as much sunshine as possible. They should not be coddled or handled too much. The mother who is forever dangling, tossing or jumping her baby to make it take notice when, perhaps, it is sleepy, and then rocking it and jumping it again to get it to sleep when its nerves are all ‘on edge’ is doing the little one a great wrong.
Many of the brain diseases of children are often traced to the foolish habit of tossing them up, or ‘making them take notice’ at an age when to ‘notice’ would show an abnormal precocity that would bode ill for future health.
Cosy Corner, 1909
Question: Could you tell me the proper age for putting little boys into trousers? Someone has suggested two years, but don’t you
think that is rather young?
Answer: Yes, much too young. Wait until he is four or five.
Mother and Home, 1910
Question: Do you believe that petting a child is bad for it?
Answer: Yes, decidedly I do. A child gets very much attached to Mother (or Nurse) who feeds and baths it. It should be the mother’s aim to prevent the child getting too attached to her and fondling the child has the opposite effect. The child who gets all this fondling is always looking for it in everybody and is miserable without it. The adult who is always recounting his ills and looking for sympathy is the outcome of too much coddling in childhood. That is why psychologists say too much mother-love is harmful.
Modern Woman, 1929
Question: How can I cure my little girl of playing with matches? I knowI should not leave them about and I do usually remember. But we have only gas and sometimes I am called away and lay them down.
Answer: Show her how to light the gas, making sure to blow the match out afterwards, and do your utmost to impress upon her that matches are for use and not as playthings…the matches will probably lose their fascination as playthings.
Woman’s Companion, 1947
Q Pete and I have only been married a year and already I am just an old housewife to him.
He scarcely speaks in the morning and never takes me out anywhere, and more and more he goes out with the boys before coming home.
A Are you sure the shoe isn’t on the other foot? That he isn’t the disillusioned? Are you the girl he married?
What about breakfast? Are you dressed pretty, or creams and curlers? Are you nice to come home to?
I have yet to know a man who doesn’t want to show off his wife if she is the prettiest and happiest girl in the street. Try looking and acting your date-best tonight. See what happens. Are you feeding him well?
too!
You should see me at breakfast 
