The Good Ol' Days

I've been on a classic movie kick lately, filling my DVR with Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Katherin Grayson, and Gene Kelly. I've introduced my children to Anchors Aweigh, Brigadoon, The Music Man, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Tender Trap...all the movies I remember watching as a child, cuddled on the couch with my sisters while rain beat against hundred year old windows.

Last night, I curled up under a cozy blanket and put on a Bob Hope and Lana Turner flick. Bachelor in Paradise wasn't one I'd seen before, but I always liked Bob Hope's brand of one liners and sly humor. This movie didn't disappoint. While it was, on the surface, a fun romp through the "new" idea of a planned development in San Fernando Valley, there were so many moments that had me sit up straight and laugh.

Unlike similar movies, this one seemed to address the idea that women gave up a piece of themselves to marriage at the time - whether it was a career in languages or autonomy to dye her hair. The women in the film were desperate housewives looking for something more from their marriages and lives. But that wasn't what made me laugh, forward thinking as it was.

(If you don't think it's forward thinking, note Debbie Reynold's speech in The Tender Trap, a speech that caused me to immediately turn off the movie to watch later after the kids went to bed because the last thing I want either child to hear is a woman spouting off nonsense that while she's happy to be offered a lead role in a Broadway show, she's just acting and singing to pass the time before she marries, hopefully by 22.)

No, what made me laugh, really laugh, was the depictions of child "care".

I've seen the memes around about how "back in the day" things were done differently. Well, if this movie is any indication, they sure were.

From the "cage and gloves" put on the toddler to keep him out of trouble to the mattress on top a play pen to keep a child contained, I was laughing at this slice of life in the 1961. Women dropped their children into play pens at the back of the bowling alley, left their children in cars outside, and let them wander with a strange man through the grocery stores.

But seriously, the cage and gloves. I looked for an image but couldn't  find one. Picture a wee babe of maybe 18 months with a bird cage strapped to his head and miniature boxing gloves on his hands.

It would certainly make the toddler stage easier. Why baby proof the house when you can house proof the baby?

I'll have to keep it in mind when people start talking about how parenting was done better during the time of Norman Rockwell.