Baby in the House: What to expect when you’re expecting 1950s style

A young couple prepare to leave hospital with their newborn daughter. The mother waves goodbye to the other new mums sitting up in bed and the nurses in starched uniforms.

Excited and nervous, the family snuggle together in the back of a Melbourne taxi for their trip home. There's no baby capsule, they're not wearing seatbelts. A clean house and hot dinner await them, courtesy of a housekeeper provided by their local council's home help scheme.

It's July 1958 and new parents Gwen and Les Schumer have agreed to let an ABC camera crew capture the first days of their life as new parents as they bring their daughter Wendy home for the first time.

The resulting program, Baby in the House, recently rediscovered and digitised by RetroFocus, was a ground-breaking episode of the ABC series Woman's World, a daytime magazine-style program made for (and in many cases by) women that ran from 1958 to 1962.

Woman's World delved not only into the predictable subjects of interest to mid-century Australian women — cooking, fashion and craft — it also covered music, art, travel and topical discussions such as the fascinating Is Education a Waste of Time for Married Women? debate.

Baby in the House was a departure from the usual format of the program, taking what now would be considered a reality TV approach by following an actual family through the first few days of new parenthood to produce an informative program aimed at young wives.

Made at a time when post-war suburban sprawl saw many young couples isolated from extended family, first-hand child-rearing experience and practical advice about what to expect and how to adapt to the new reality of parenthood was often hard to come by.

Baby in the House attempted to fill this gap by providing a gentle, reassuring glimpse into a real family's experience.

How has new parenthood changed since 1958?

Presenter Joy Wren's soothing narration guides viewers through Gwen and Leslie's first anxious nights and days as parents.

We join Les returning to work, endeavouring to quit smoking and forego pub lunches to help save money, and lying awake at night worrying his daughter's hungry cry might be something more serious. Meanwhile, Gwen confidently settles into a day and night routine, learning to bathe, breastfeed and burp baby Wendy.

After a reassuring visit to the nearby baby health clinic, she parks the pram outside a phone booth to call Les. Exhausted and distracted at work, the "silly man" — as he's described in the voiceover — is relieved when Gwen tells him Wendy is doing just fine.

It's a fascinating glimpse back at the past, but how accurately did it portray new parenthood, and has much really changed since?

We talked to Gwen, the young mother in the program and now a great-grandmother, and her baby Wendy, now a grandmother herself, to find out how Baby in the House compares to their experiences of motherhood, and how things have — and haven't — shifted over the decades.

Casting her mind back 62 years, when Australian TV was still in its own infancy, Gwen remembers being told by her sister-in-law that the ABC was looking to film a woman about to have a baby. She readily volunteered.

However, the producers did take some licence with the truth in portraying her as a first-time mother, as she already had a young son, Leslie (named after his dad). The cameramen ensured he stayed out of frame by letting him pretend he was part of the film crew, she recalls.

There's another reason Gwen appears so confident and calm handling a newborn in front of a camera crew. As the eldest daughter in a large family, she often looked after her younger siblings when her parents went out — including a time she was left in charge for six months, while they were overseas.

"I didn't mind that at all," she says. "I was about 14 at the time. That certainly gave me the experience."

Today's dads are more 'hands-on'

Wendy says she became quite emotional while watching the film as an adult. "My dad died when he was young. He didn't ever get to meet my children, so it was so beautiful to see him with me as a baby," she says.

Gwen insists Les was a "lovely" father. "He certainly adored Wendy. Right from the very beginning she was his girl."

However, she's keen to set the record straight on one aspect of the way her late husband was depicted: "He didn't actually smoke. They made that bit up, to our disgust. He would never have smoked."

Yet the role of the father is quite different today than it was back then, Wendy says. "They shared the joy of bringing [home] the baby, but the financial pressure was all his and I think he was portrayed as a little bit silly and useless ... with the newborn and it was fully the woman's role."

Today's dads are more hands-on, she says, and get to enjoy parenting. "I know my son was a completely full-on, hands-on, nappy-changing dad right from the get-go."

Still, the joy a new baby brings to a family hasn't changed, Wendy says — nor has the accompanying financial pressure.

"I know when I had my first child, I went from working full-time to suddenly not working, so we went from a two-income family to a one-income, and that puts stress on the family. Same with my children when they had their first babies, my first grandchildren. They were both working and then it's one income. I think that's still real today."

A 'beautiful little time capsule'

Having recently re-watched the program with friends, Gwen says they were amazed at the difference in the way mothers back then dressed just to take the baby out for a walk in the pram. "I was in my high heels and coat," she says.

"Mum was so glamorous in it," adds Wendy. "She still is glamorous. She looked like Grace Kelly."

Then there are Wendy's baby clothes.

"They were not snap-lock bodysuits. They were knitted booties with ribbons, embroidered cardigans, and a little dress. That would not be wash and wear!" Wendy laughs.

She also marvels at the way her parents just hopped in a taxi without seatbelts, and she travelled on her mother's lap. "That certainly wouldn't happen today, we'd need to have a capsule. You wouldn't be allowed to leave hospital without one."

So how did Gwen feel when Baby in the House was finally broadcast on January 29, 1959?

"There were very few people who had TVs in our street," she says. "I know that a few friends actually bought TVs so they could see it. We had a TV but only just, and a few friends came to our place to watch it when it was on, so it was pretty exciting. At the time TV was very new to Australia."

Unsurprisingly, Wendy has no memory of any of it, but says she's grateful to have a "beautiful little time capsule" that preserves her first few days of life in such detail.

"I feel very lucky to have that to share with my grandchildren so they can see what life was like in Melbourne back in the late 50s. It's quite remarkable to have.

Caring For Your Newborn