Back in the 50s and 60s, prams and pushchairs were big, heavy and cumbersome. Prams didn’t fold up to go on buses or in cars. Pushchairs folded but were still bulky and heavy. The baby started off in a big, usually coach built pram and at a certain age graduated to a pushchair. There were no lightweight buggies. Families with cars bought a small rectangular soft-bodied thing known as a carry-cot which just sat on the back seat with the baby lying in it. There were no seatbelts in cars then and definitely nothing securing the carry-cot. There were no car seats for babies, toddlers and children. They were held in an adult’s arms until old enough to sit up and then just travelled unsecured in the back seat.
A friend was recalling recently that in the early 70s, it was difficult to buy prams because there was a shortage of steel.
The basic design of cots is still much the same but modern ones are much safer.
There were no disposable nappies. There still weren’t any when my children were born in the early 80s. Nappies were white towelling squares which were folded and pinned with special big safety pins called, appropriately enough, nappy pins. To add a waterproof outer layer a pair of thin rubber pants were pulled on over the nappy. These nappies needed to be boiled to keep them hygienic and white! When you consider that most households didn’t have washing machines or tumble driers the amount of work involved was enormous. I can remember pink and blue nappy pins ones like the ones in the photograph.
Many baby toys and toys for children were made of tin. There was no plastic. I remember my brother as a toddler cutting his leg on a toy made from tin. Also, the paints used on tin toys and on wooden cots were lead based and therefore toxic.
Very young children often wore reins like this when out with the family. I remember very clearly seeing children with walking reins on. They were leather and often pastel coloured with a picture on the front like these in the photograph. They were backed with a white fleecy fabric for comfort.
Baby bottles were made of glass and the teats were made of rubber.
Credit to Google Images and Wikipedia. As always, I have endeavored not to infringe copyright. However, if anyone objects to my use of an image, please contact me and I will remove it.
Childhood Memories of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. 
By the early 80s most families certainly did have a washing machine. We, a working-class family, got our first, a Scales Fairy, in 1954, obviously not an automatic. I got my first, a top-loading automatic, in 1972 on starting my first decently paid job aged 25 and living in a small rented house. In any case before that I’d lived in bed-sits. I was neither affluent nor unusual. Prams were usually Silver Cross. When I was born in 1947 my mother bought a secondhand twin pram because it was cheap. It was handy when my sister arrived in 1949 because I couldn’t walk very fast or very far and Mam couldn’t manage both a pram and a pushchair. In the episode of a TV serial we were watching last night (World on Fire seeing as you ask) one of the characters turns up at an airbase with her baby in a pram. There is no indication of distance but she’d never have got it on a bus so it must have been near enough to walk. Patricia Fairey
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Thanks for your interesting comment. My first automatic washing machine, bought in 1980, was a top loader and I thought it was brilliant.
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Mine was brilliant compared with having to walk to a launderette with the washing in a big suitcase! Two or three years later, having bought a house, I bought a front-loader because the top-loader didn’t fit under the worktop. By then top-loaders were on the way out, though they were still popular in France.
Husband insisted on a tumble dryer but I use it only for his towels and dry as much as possible outside. Rotary clotheslines are brilliant!
And while we’re on the subject of washing, whoever decided it was a good idea to put ‘fragrance’ in washing powder/liquid should have been strangled at birth. It’s the single worst thing about staying away from home.
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Launderettes! They were so important at one time and now they’re a rare species indeed.
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Thankfully there are still a few around with machines big enough to take a double duvet!
Earlier this year I went to Brighton for an event and took the opportunity to walk along the seafront to Hove to see the house in Rutland Gardens in which I had a bedsit for a few months in 1968. To my surprise the launderette round the corner I used was still there and open so I had a long nostalgic chat with the manager, who’d always lived in the area and had been a boy at the time.
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Lovely story! I have fond memories of the launderette I used in the early 70s, no longer there, which was run by identical twin sisters in their 50s. I would drop my washing off on the way to work and pick it up on my way home washed, dried and carefully folded.
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When I had my daughter in the mid-1970s, there were disposable diapers available, but there was no way I could afford them on my husband’s Navy pay. I used cloth diapers and rubber pants.
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Also, the early ones were not as reliable as the ones which are made now.
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As I said, I couldn’t afford them anyhow!
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Neither could I!
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My daughter was born in 1967 and I purchased “fitted” or shaped terry towelling nappies which were easier to use. The early type disposable nappies were available which I only used if going out for convenience.
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I didn’t come across shaped towelling nappies even in the 80s so you were ahead of your time! Yes, the early versions of disposables were useful for days out or holidays but not for regular use.
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I remember many of these things from when my younger brother was born!
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Thank you for your lovely stories on dolls and all things babies. I am a fan of both and the little doll that you showed was my favourite kind of doll – baby dolls and prams, I always said that English prams were beautifully made they had a lovely shape to them and the beautiful wee rompers, they were gorgeous, they still make them in the UK and I also loved how the Princess of Wales had George in them, I loved her choice in babywear. Yes prams have changed somewhat nowadays. In NZ they have a lot of black fabrics well I think Navy is very smart and todays prams are so golf trundler like, I much prefer the carrycot styled ones where the baby doesn’t look like a half shut pocket knife, it can’t be good for their backs, but I guess they are more appropriate for the bus and putting into cars.
Well I’ll get along now and stop the waffle but this is a favourite subject of mine and just before I do I love the knitting for babies but that’s another story for another day
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I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed reading my blog! I still have the doll’s pram my youngest daughter got for her fifth birthday 35 years ago. All the grandchildren have enjoyed playing with it. It’s still in lovely condition as it’s been well loved but well taken care of too.
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