The Second World War was the deadliest,
costliest, and most far reaching war in human history. With so many lives being lost,
the value of children was heightened to bring hope to the future of so many countries. This was the
era of odd baby advice and bizarre pregnancy tests but also the dawn of the age of working moms.
Welcome back to Nutty History and let’s dive into the lives of pregnant women during World War II
and all they faced like some domestic soldiers on the home front. Let’s get started.
In the UK, World War II was a particularly challenging time to be an expectant mother.
The day after war was declared, over 12,000 pregnant women left their homes to take
up accommodation in rural areas to await the arrival of their baby. These women were expected
to give birth in hastily amassed maternity “hospitals” provided by the Ministry of Health,
then stay at their countryside billets for the remainder of the war. Imagine having
to raise your newborn in the home of strangers. Until this time, most women gave birth at home,
usually with the assistance of a midwife. But this became much more difficult during the war,
as midwifery services had been moved to the emergency hospitals outside the UK’s major cities.
After some time, the bombs were no longer the reason that women were leaving the city to give
birth – the beds were. The London boroughs were simply unable to meet demand for either home or
hospital births. The war had destroyed a number of hospitals, and the upper floors of those still
functioning were closed due to fears of further damage. Midwifery staff had been relocated to
the country maternity homes and therefore there really was little choice for women but to go where
the facilities were. Accordingly, in 1942 the government changed how it described the scheme,
from an evacuation scheme to a “special scheme of country maternity homes for city mothers”.
Now if you were lucky enough to get a hospital bed, it’s likely you would stay an extended
period after giving birth—up to 10 days. At the beginning of these long stays, women were pushed
together in large rooms to go through labor, then sequestered in sterile solitary rooms.
As an up-and-coming mother, people always want to impart their good advice on how to healthily
bring their little one into the world – whether they want to hear it or not. But, in the late
1930’s and early 40’s, some of these widely regarded tips and tricks were just downright
bonkers. For one, the US Department labor infant care pamphlet called an infant’s regulation of his
bowels and bladder a key part of his character building. Wait, what? Mothers were instructed
to start bowel training their babies from 2 months old! How could they possibly go to the
bathroom if they couldn’t even hold themselves upright? Mother would hold the baby over the
“chamber” at the exact same time each day, and use a soap stick, if necessary to provoke a…
movement. They say childcare is messy, but this takes it to the next level.
This pamphlet predicted that by 6-8 months the baby would be trained, and by 10 months, parents
could start on the bladder training. Allegedly, this idea came from the drudgery of cleaning
dirty cloth diapers. Okay, we can appreciate the ingenuity, but we’d like to know the success rate.
Nutrition was just as hot a topic in the 1940’s as it is now, but not all advice was useful. Many
experts suggested that children should be given meals of liver soup starting at three months.
Parents looking for ways to curb thumb-sucking in 1942 finally had a product to try, even though it
went a little too far. May we present: Thum. The brush-on nail treatment contained acetone,
nail polish and to traumatize them enough that they would have a lasting fear of thumbs forever.
Technology has inspired debate, particularly when it came to how it could impact a pregnant woman.
In the 1940s, a pamphlet published by the Canadian government warned women not to listen to the radio
at loud volumes. The reason? The government was afraid that mothers would get too excited
listening to loud dancing music. And to top it off, manifesting your destiny existed long before
inspirational Ted Talks. Medical experts deemed cheerfulness beneficial to your health.
They insisted that by keeping the mind overflowing with happiness,
a delightful, lively, rosy-cheeked baby will come your way! Sure, we’ll keep that one in mind!
Although the world was going through turmoil, as WW2 raged on, mortality rates decreased in the
Western world. This was due to improved medical training and doctors quickly abandoning some of
their more dangerous practices. Complications from C-sections steadily declined and medical
researchers rigorously evaluated the success rates and risks of new techniques and medication.
Doctors also began to take more sanitary measures when delivering, like washing their
hands. Additionally, women’s nutrition and health improved, ensuring few problems caused by dietary
deficiencies, such as rickets. Maternal mortality rates had fallen, and the baby boom was on the
cusp. In the UK, the National Milk Scheme made subsidized or free milk available to all pregnant
women or nursing mothers. In 1942 the Vitamin Welfare Scheme was extended to include expectant
and nursing mothers (and children under five), allowing them free or inexpensive orange juice,
cod liver oil or vitamin A and D tablets. Well, that’s better than liver soup!
Furthermore, the number of hospital maternity beds rose by fifty percent during the war,
thus ensuring that the pre-war trend towards the hospitalization of childbirth continued.
By the end of the war a majority of births took place in an institution for the first time.
The outbreak of World War II in Europe led to the idea of childbirth as patriotic. The idea
was that having babies was vital for national security because the birth rate of a nation
would determine how many of its future citizens could defend the country in war
and provide economic productivity in order to finance war efforts. When men went off to war
in the United States, it left many essential jobs, especially in agriculture, other food production,
and manufacturing to be filled by American women. And don’t get us wrong, these ladies were more
than capable of stepping up to work, or so they thought. If you were a working woman at the time
and fell pregnant, however, your boss might not be so quick to keep you on. The chief reason for
this was fear of a damage lawsuit should the work result in injury or miscarriage. Unfortunately,
there was no legislation to prevent an employer from firing a woman for being pregnant,
which was often when she needed the job most. For those who kept their jobs, there was no paid
time off for medical appointments, no benefits, no maternity leave, and no guarantee their job would
be waiting for them after the baby was born. What a warm welcome to the workforce, right ladies?
It wasn’t much better for those women who were out there on the front lines. The leading cause
of discharge from the military for women during World War II was what some women called PWOP or
Pregnant WithOut Permission. If you were found to be pregnant, you were immediately discharged. The
only exception to this would be if your pregnancy were not discovered until a stage where it would
be dangerous for you to travel. In those cases, you would be brought back from the front lines,
and you and your baby would be shipped home a few weeks after the birth. And if it wasn’t bad enough
at the beginning of the war, unmarried nurses were dishonorably discharged! This labeled the
pregnant woman a criminal, and this caused not only personal distress but prevented her from
obtaining specific help or work in the future. Hardly the patriotic outcome they deserved.
One of the problems with involving doctors in contraception was that many women in the '30s
and '40s either didn't have a family physician or didn't want to have a doctor examine them just
to be prescribed a diaphragm. Feminine hygiene, however, was expected from women and they could
purchase vaginal jellies, suppositories, douches, and foaming tablets over the counter — these
product were were marketed as birth control, suggesting that keeping your body clean would
rid the body of sperm.? If you missed your monthly and thought you might be pregnant,
however, you could always take a test and see. But this method was a little slippery compared to
others. In the first half of the 20th century, doctors would inject a woman's urine under a
female frog's skin and - if she was pregnant - it would cause the amphibian to produce eggs! This
was thought to be the most accurate way of testing pregnancy at the time. Since you needed a doctor’s
permission to receive the test, most women instead relied on morning sickness and sore tender breasts
as early clues to their pregnancy. We’re glad to see this method croak. See what I did there?
Don’t forget to tell us what era of history you’d like to hear about pregnancy and childbirth next!
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