Antique Cribs and antique Cradle
05/17/08

Research indicates that mothers often left their children at home while they went to work in the fields or to do other work. "Babies taken to the fields may have had fewer accidents, but their presence interfered with work. For this reason, children were swaddled and often left in an antique cradle (or an antique crib) for a considerable portion of their early years. People of the time felt a swaddled baby in a crib / cradle was safe and could be left alone. When children were too old to be swaddled, they were tied to their antique cribs / cradle. This prevented them from crawling around the home and getting into mischief or endangering themselves. Mothers thought that this would prevent accidents, but cribs / cradle fires were the leading cause of death for infants. Siblings, even as young as two or three, were often left in charge of overseeing the infants while they were confined to their antique cribs.