Nowadays if you write to an agony aunt, you are likely to get good advice, understanding and support. But it hasn't always been that way. A new book "Never Kiss a Man in Canoe: Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Aunt" has collected the worst ever agony aunt replies from days gone by.
It's some of the harshest, most brutal - and sometimes just plain wrong answers to problems suffered by our grandmother and great -grandmothers. It varies from advice on diet, beauty, love and courtship to how to bring up children - and it's certainly enough to make you really glad times have moved on. Author Tanith Carey says: "I got the idea when I came across a problem page in a parenting magazine from 1915 when I was researching my second book A Mother's Love. "The Agony Aunt was telling one poor mum that babies should be picked up as little as possible before the age of one because it overstimulates them! "As a parenting journalist, half of me was really shocked because it's so different to what we know now - and the other slightly amused by the tone of absolutely certainty in which the agony aunt had written it!
"I decided to look into it further and found loads of examples, a lot of them very humorous from our modern perspective, that shows how times have thankfully moved on."
A beautifully packaged hardback which would make the perfect Christmas present, Never Kiss in a Canoe is available from all good book shops and Amazon for the special introductory price of £5.99 - almost half of its regular price of £9.99. Mums Like You have five givaway copies for mums that want to review the book. If you are interested, please email admin@mumslikeyou.com
And here are some highlights from 'Never kiss a man in a canoe-words of wisdom from the golden age of agony aunts, by Tanith Carey
“Plenty of Milk, Plenty of Sleep and Plenty of Fannel” : Advice to worried mothers on child-rearing
Question: Do you believe in paddling? I have heard it is bad for children to have their feet in cold water with the sun on their heads.
Answer: Paddling is only safe for a short time in warm, shallow water, such as in pools on the sands when the tide is out. A great deal of mischief is done to children’s health every year by paddling as you describe. Kidney troubles, coughs, colds, toothache and neuralgia, diarrhoea and stomach catarrh are frequently brought on by chills to lower limbs while paddling.
Mother and Home 1910
Question: Is cycling injurious to very young children? At what age may it be started?
Answer: Cycling is not a very good exercise for young children, for there is too much strain on the muscles of the legs, and children’s muscles are soon tired. A little of it, however, won’t do any harm, if they avoid competition with older riders. It is this – by leading children to exert themselves overmuch – which does so much harm to little cyclists. Nine or ten years of age is generally old enough to begin cycling.
Mother and Home 1910
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
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