My post from Furthertheless.com about real live "practice" babies

(Article can be found HERE).

For several years, many colleges across the US were quietly taking orphaned babies back to their picturesque campuses to be used as part of their Home Economics programs.  It was at these prestigious colleges that young women learned the ins and outs of being a good housewife and mother, all according to principles set out by science.  These orphans, nicknamed “Domecons” for domestic economics, lived on campus in “practice” houses and apartments.  Women taking these courses became their “practice” mothers. Cornell was one such college that ran this program from 1919-1969.

At Cornell, eight female students at a time spent a full semester living in a fully-kitted out practice apartment. The women were there to learn the entire spectrum of homemaking skills, and, the exhibit says, “an early proponent of the program, believed that babies were essential to replicate the full domestic experience. Albert Mann, Dean of the College of Agriculture, called the apartments ‘essential laboratory practice for women students.’  (SOURCE)

For about a year, these “domecon” babies lived in a laboratory bubble: every action the female students undertook was prescribed by experts in the field, including when and how much to feed a baby, when to put him or her to sleep, when to play with the baby, etc.  It was believed that an upbringing rooted in “scientific fact” was immeasurably better than an upbringing based on maternal instinct alone.  The students also created scrapbooks that chronicled the development of the child, both in picture and in words.

Domecon scrapbook

LINK

A sample feeding schedule for any given child looked something like this:

Milk (skimmed), one pint.
Toast, crackers, both white and graham.
Cereal thoroughly cooked but not strained.
Fruit juice and pulp, two kinds each day, especially orange juice and prune pulp.
Potatoes, mashed or baked, served without butter.
Vegetables other than potatoes, almost any kind, especially spinach, carrots, tomatoes.
Meat in the form of scraped beef, veal, or chicken, two or three times per week or
Eggs 2 or 3 times per week or
Custards 2 or 3 times per week.
Cod liver oil, 3 tsp. per day.

After a year or so, these babies were sent back to the orphanage where they were quickly adopted by parents eager to have babies raised according to the scientific breakthroughs of the day.  However, no one seems to know how any of these babies turned out.  Although evidence today points to the opposite direction – babies need to form a trusting bond with a primary caregiver – we don’t know the extent of the impact these kinds of programs had on these children.

Further reading can be found on Cornell’s Home Economics website and in an article by Emily Anthes.