The Victorian Anxiety Over 'Fat Babies'
An 1880 advice column warns parents that 'excessive fat is really a disease' and cautions against the physical toll of oversized toddlers on their own developing bones.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
If a child is healthy, and has good, nourishing food and pure air—the two great essentials for making good blood—it will probably outgrow its bow legs naturally enough as its strength increases. Rubbing the legs with your hands in the morning may help to strengthen and straighten them. If the case is very bad, the two legs may be bound together with comfortable bandages during sleep, rubbing them well before and after binding them. If the child is quite young, it may be kept from standing on its feet for a few months, giving nature time to straighten the crookedness while limbs are growing stronger; a carriage and high chair are helps toward carrying out this plan. All these things that have been mentioned as curative agencies may be used as preventives. A healthy child, with wholesome food and pure air to breathe, if kept from standing and walking while too young and weak, will not have bow legs. Scrofulous children are more likely to suffer in this way, and those that are very fleshy. Don't take pride in your fat baby. Excessive fat is really a disease, instead of a sign of health. Fatten your pigs as much as you fancy, but do not deliberately fatten your children. Give them plenty of good, growing food, and they will be plump enough for symmetry and not too heavy for comfortable activity. It is no wonder that the little legs bend under the heavy weight of some fat little toddlers. Such children should not be encouraged to stand or walk until they have grown strong enough to do so of their own accord, and then should not be allowed to walk too much.
“Fatten your pigs as much as you fancy, but do not deliberately fatten your children.”
While modern pediatrics has evolved far beyond 'binding' limbs to correct bow legs—a condition often associated with vitamin D deficiency (rickets) in the 19th century—the societal pressure on parents regarding childhood weight and 'the ideal body' remains a persistent and fraught cultural theme in Seattle and beyond.
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