History in The United States
Until the mid-1900s, the vast majority of babies finished toilet training by 2 years, and achieved nighttime dryness by 3 years. Since then, the age for toilet training has increased dramatically. The US Department of Labor Children’s Bureau put out a series of publications called Infant Care starting in 1914, and recommended toilet training to be started in the first year until the 1951 edition. In 1914, parents were advised to start toilet training by the third month "with the utmost gentleness". A somewhat harsh method that used suppositories to put the baby on a strict schedule of bowel movements was advocated in 1929 and 1935. In 1938, parents were advised to start bowel training "as early as the sixth month". By 1951, fears of psychological ramifications of early training surfaced and parents were advised to wait "between one and a half to two years" to commence training. However, in 1957, the average age of starting toilet training was still under one year, at 11 months, and 90% of children were dry during the day by 2 years. In 2002, the average age that parents recognized their child "showing an interest in using the potty" was 24–25 months, and daytime dryness was achieved on average at almost 3 years of age. Nighttime accidents are now considered normal until 5 or 6 years of age.
Read more about this topic: Toilet Training
Famous quotes containing the words united states, history, united and/or states:
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Falling in love with a United States Senator is a splendid ordeal. One is nestled snugly into the bosom of power but also placed squarely in the hazardous path of exposure.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls’ curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can.”
—Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922)