Child Specialist Thinks Prams Are Prisons for Babies

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 20, 12 April 1950, Page 3

Child Specialist Thinks Prams Are Prisons for Babies

A well known child-care specialist who lives a few hundred yards from Kensington Gardens, worldfamous pram promenade of nannies and children, thinks prams are prisons.

He says the pram parade sticks “rolls of fat” on the babies, breaks down their . digestive systems, makes them knock-kneed.

“Go to Kensington Gardens and see the big, fat children sucking their fingers in prams and looking the 'picture of misery,” he told the Women’s Public Health Officers’ Association in London.

On a tour of investigation in Kensington Gardens, a newspaper reporter found scores of bonny “prisoners of the pram” cooing and chuckling, bouncing and bobbing, and generally quite unmoved by the implied criticism. Not so the proud pram-pushers. While 21 months old Susan blew bubbles and chuckled at her dimpled fist, Mr John Howard, salesman, said indignantly:

“I’ve never heard such nonsense. However else are we going to take Susan out? She’s a ton weight to carry, even for me.” “I suppose these chaps know all about it,” reflected Mr Albert Milllen, lorry driver. “But John Henry always looks forward to his pram ride, don’t you, ducky?” John Henry, nine months, creased into one big smile.