Attachment Parenting View from 1951 (Original Father of the Bride 2)
I am sure you have watched Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride 2. Well, they are based on movies from the early fifties. The original sequel was called Father’s Little Dividend and it was filmed in 1951. I found the following section very interesting in regard to attachment parenting. The father, Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy), and his daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) were saying that everyone should stop interfering in her pregnancy. She went on to explain her doctor’s radical views which certainly shocked her father.
Kay: “I guess they just don’t understand the new way of looking at things. As Dr. Nordell says, birth is a perfectly natural thing, a glorious thing, and wants you to be conscious every minute so you they don’t miss a second of it. He believes a woman should be aware of the wonderful thing that is happening to her. And another thing, he doesn’t believe that a woman should be separated from her baby for one second after it’s born. You should carry it with you, right back to your room, and keep it there with you, sleeping right there with you in your hospital bed.”
Stanley Banks: “That is a little new isn’t it.”
Kay: “Oh, Pop, that’s not new! Primitive woman has always done it. Dr. Nordell was in the Pacific and he said the women there, why, they were never separated from their babies. They kept them slung on their backs for the first two years of their lives. He said it was wonderful for the baby. He said if he had his way, all of his mothers would do that. You would carry them on your back while you were doing housework and when it got hungry, you would swing it around and feed it, and swing it back again. He says it gives the baby a wonderful feeling of security.”
Father’s Little Dividend 5/12 (1951) (Clip beginning at 3:40)
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What a sketch! It is hard to believe that it was 30 years after this movie that our hospital policies even STARTED to change to reflect views similar to the fictional, but sensible, Dr. Nordell. I am almost positive that I was the first mother at our local hospital to have “rooming in” with our baby Ruth. That was in 1983.