Do any of you other boomers remember parents exposing their kids to common childhood diseases

[rzemanfl]

to "get it over with" back in the day?

[Thomas Hurt]

1. My mother didn't do it purposely, it just happened in normal course, but she also got me vaccinated.

[Leith]

12. Same here

Everybody in elementary school got mumps, measles, and chicken pox eventually in the 1960s.. No deliberate exposure needed.

In late summer, there was mass vaccination in the local junior high school gym. That's where I got the "big" vaccinations: whooping cough, smallpox, polio, and whatever else there was.

[apcalc]

52. My mom was an RN , and smart.

I had chicken pox and was vaccinated against the rest.

Never had measles or mumps, nor polio.

Deliberately exposing your kids???

Child abuse. Hands down.

PS I was vaccinated in the 50’s and 60’s. Yes, vaccines were available.

[csziggy]

56. My Mom was an RN, too

For a while she worked on the pediatric ward of the local community hospital. The nurses and aides were given vaccinations to take home to vaccinate their families to protect us from what Mom could bring home.

When she stopped working, she dragged us to the local Health Department office where vaccinations were free or very cheap.

She made certain that we got every single vaccination available, every time it was needed.

I did have chicken pox before there was a vaccination for it. Apparently I had a bad case - Mom always blamed my tendancy to get respiratory infections on that bout of chicken pox. My doctor made sure I got the shingle vaccination as soon as I could to protect me.

[smirkymonkey]

100. My mom also started out as an RN and she had us vaccinated for everything, but there was

no chicken pox vaccine at the time. She allowed me to be around my siblings who contracted the disease hoping I would get it and get it out of the way, however I never really came down with it. I remember getting a few itchy bumps but that was it. I never came down with a full blown case.

I am now 56 and just had my series of shingles shots just in case. That is definitely not something I want to take a chance with.

[csziggy]

117. Oh, yeah - my Dad had a bad case of shingles

And he suffered for over six months, ended up with permanently "active" nerves across his back that bothered him for the last ten-fifteen years of his life.

I have an infection in my hand that is a different kind of zoster virus but works the same way - starts as a tingling in the nerves and if untreated develops into an open pustule. I keep a bottle of valcyclovir (Valtrex) around to take as soon as the tingle starts.

Since it is related to the chicken pox/shingles virus my doctor got me to take the shingles vaccine as soon as he diagnosed mine. I still get flare ups, but with the valcyclovir it's manageable. And I have it around to treat shingles if I get them.

[zackymilly]

121. Wow. I had shingles too, but I was lucky.

I worked in maintenance in an industrial plant at the time, and when i got the shingles on my back, I thought i had gotten into some acid or caustic at work, because my back was blistering and turned black and blue on one side. They didn't have a shingles vaccine back then, and all I got was pain meds. I didn't have any long term effects, but I've read where people can become paralyzed from it.

[csziggy]

130. He had the shingle pain in his upper back then lower back from deteriorating vertebrae

Fortunately the shingles just gave him the nerve tingling, not the full blown nerve pain or sores.

I've heard of people losing their sight if shingles gets to an eye - scary!

Just that one little spot I have is seriously painful - it can feel as though someone is holding a lit cigarette to the place constantly. I hope I never get a full case of shingles!

I'm sorry to hear you had the full blown thing. I hope it never recurs.

[smirkymonkey]

126. I'm so sorry you are suffering from it. I have heard it is horrible.

Have you had the newer shingles shot? It is supposed to be much more effective and I think the older one wears off after a certain period. If not, you should ask your doctor about it. I wish you all the best!

[csziggy]

138. This is something I've had for 45 years

And it only recurs every so often, usually when I am under stress. Now that I have valcyclovir and can take it as soon as the nerve tingling starts, it never gets very painful.

I do need to check with my doctor about the newer shingles shot, but I think this herpes zoster variety is different than the one the shingles shot controls.

[Ms. Toad]

91. Not before vaccines, it wasn't child abuse.

Families back then were larger, and adults (particularly males) had not always had mumps, for example. The complications from mumps are much more serious for adults (particularly male adults) than they are for children. So it makes sense for families with large numbers of children (mine had 5; my spouses's had 7) to get the inevitable over all at once in order to protect the adults form much more serious consequences that they would be more likely to incur as a result of repeated exposure.

Vaccines for the mumps, measles, and rubella (separately) were in testing phases in the early 60s. (The rubella vaccine was tested on my brother, as an abandoned child). He was born in '58 (but was not in state care until '62)). General information says they became publically availabe as separate vaccines in '63, but that the combination was not available until '71, so your timing is a bit off.

[apcalc]

97. I'm talking about people NOW deliberately exposing their children,

not many years ago. Even then , it was not deliberate.

[Ms. Toad]

98. This was the question posed:

Do any of you other boomersremember parents exposing their kids

In other words the quesiton was specifically limited to parents of children born before 1964, about the practices of those parents.

And - it WAS deliberate, in many instances, in that era. My parents intentionally exposed the rest of the kids in my family when I had the mumps, because there was no way to protect my father (who had not had the mumps) except to minimize the number of times his children exposed him. My parents also exposed all of us to chicken pox - again, intentionally. Chicken pox is contagious enough that nearly everyone got it, so the thinking was if there is a choice to have chicken pox during a time it would not interfere with school (for example) that was the better option.

That is the deliberate practice the OP was asking about.

[getagrip_already]

129. You mean like chicken pox parties?

I heard of them, but never saw one.

My father was a family practice pediatrician. His practice was in the house.

I got EVERY inoculation that existed in the 60's.

I never had one child hood illness. I finally got the chicken pox at 28. It sucked....

[Ms. Toad]

131. Ours was via lollipops licked b the person with chicken pox.

We had a second cousin who got chicken pox. She licked lollipops that we were then given to eat. As I reacall, it was not very effective - most of us actually didn't get chicken pox.

I did the same for my siblings when I got mumps (since my father had not had mumps - and they are relatively dangerous for an adult male). The 5 of us managed to get mumps in two rounds - so my father only had to move out of the twice.

[apcalc]

132. Deliberate?

They deliberately exposed you? Or there was no choice.

I consider deliberate exposure to disease when there is a choice a form of child abuse.
If there is no choice, as there was not years ago, that is different.

[Ms. Toad]

136. Deliberate exposure. That's what the question was asking about.

And no, it was not child abuse.

As I have explained repeatedly (and as everyone who lived through the pre-vaccination era knows), some of the childhood diseases are much harder on adults than they are on children - mumps, for example. It is often devastating for an adult male, whereas it is relatively mild for the vast majority of children. Similarly, rubella is very mild for the vast majority of children - but can cause miscarriage and severe birth defects when contracted by pregnant women. Although my mother was only pregnant twice, my spouse's mother was pregnant 9 times, so the risk was very real in the pre-vaccine era - and most women could not afford to move out of their house anytime they might have been pregnant and one of their many children had rubella.

My father did not have mumps as a child. There were 5 siblings in my family (3 adopted - whic his why only 2 pregnancies). Each time one of us contracted the mumps my father had to move out of the house for 10-days to 2 weeks in order to avoid exposure - and mumps is most contagious before the symptoms occur. It was much safer to deliberatly expose all of the siblings (most of whom in that era would have ultimately contracted mumps anyway), rather than risk repeated exposure for my father as each sibling separately came down with the illness.

(It was actually using my infection to deliberately expose my siblings, since I caught it first accidentally.)

[apcalc]

137. I know what the question was.

[zackymilly]

119. My mom was also an RN and a WWII army nurse.

She never exposed us as a group to childhood diseases, but i still remember when we were little she would bring flu vaccine from the hospital and syringes, and would yell to come to her bedroom. My dad would be behind the door and grab me and hold me down and she would give me the shot in the butt. She meant well, but her delivery of it has bothered me forever.

[mcar]

73. That's what I remember

Older brother, then sis got chicken pox, then me. Younger brother wasn't born yet and didn't get it till he was 21.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. No.

On the contrary, my mom, an RN, was tried very hard to keep us away from sick kids. We got the diseases anyhow, but not because we were intentionally exposed to them.

[Rorey]

3. Mine didn't do it

But I know some did.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Gen Xer

Born in 1973. First kid to get Chicken Pox in my class. And a WHOLE bunch of moms brought their kids to say hello at my house. Got it out of the way in one fell swoop in the 1st grade.

[happybird]

115. Yep.

I’m also GenX (b. 1975) and that’s what the parents in our small town did, too. I was in either first or second grade when we all had the chicken pox. My grade had about 20 kids, total.

[redstatebluegirl]

5. Nope my folks would never do that.

[rzemanfl]

10. I didn't say mine did. I know parents used to hope their boys got mumps.

I was inadvertently exposed to mumps. My father hadn't had them and stayed with his parents until it was clear I wasn't going to get them either.

[Liberty Belle]

79. True because mumps often caused sterility in adult men, but not boys.

Before the vaccine, exposure maybe made sense, but not today with vaccinations available.

[mr_lebowski]

6. I'm not a boomer (X'er) but remember it being talked about as though many still did it ...

Actually works a treat with chicken pox from what I understand. And the vaccine for that is relatively new IIRC.

Obviously now that there are vaccines, it's pretty stupid, but back before them it made sense, esp. for chicken pox as it's horrific to get when you're an adult. Can be fatal even.

[Mz Pip]

7. I remember that happening for Chicken Pox

I never participated in it, though.

My older son got a fairly mild case.

My younger son got it bad. When he was 31 he got shingles. So glad there’s a vaccine out for chicken pox now.

[luvs2sing]

8. Yes!

A month before I started first grade, I came down with mumps. Every kid in the neighborhood came by to entertain me, their mothers hoping they would catch them and be over them before school started. No one else caught them, but I was grateful for the company during that long week. 😂

[2naSalit]

9. I know of many who did.

We didn't have any choice, many kids who passed it around the house. So when one of us got something, we were all exposed before the first one showed symptoms. Some of us even had a second round of the same thing within a week of getting over it. Consequently I had the chicken pox twice, the "two week" measles twice, mumps twice... I suspect my body hadn't had a chance to build up the antibodies in that short of time. Plus I was one of the "diaper changers" so...

[Chainfire]

11. Mine certainly did

I think that most of the mothers in the 50s did. That went for measles, mumps and chickenpox.

[TheBlackAdder]

125. Mine did too. I was retested when I went back to my university and I still have the antibodies.

.

The schools test for and require more shots for those entering.

Now, as I approach 60, shingles has been on the back of my mind, as I've seen a few others go through it.

.

[Runningdawg]

13. Yes in the church nursery

[rzemanfl]

14. Ha! n/t

[Siwsan]

15. No. Cross contamination was a consequence of contact at school, etc

I remember getting mumps, months after everyone else.

[Greybnk48]

16. Mine did not do that,

but we knew people who did. Some people did not take childhood diseases seriously back then due to lack of education.

[robbob]

17. While I don't remember my parents deliberately doing it

I believe the notion was that it was better to catch these illnesses when young then to catch them as an adult. Which I think is somewhat true? I don’t know if it’s mumps or measles that can cause sterility it’s you contract the disease as an adult? So “to get it over with”, yes, but also for a good reason.

[rzemanfl]

19. Mumps, I believe. n/t

[Polly Hennessey]

18. Not on purpose. We were all

vaccinated. I caught the measles and the mumps before being vaccinated. Was there a vaccine for mumps? Can’t remember. No fun.

[Kingofalldems]

22. They didn't have those vacs in my time.

Pretty much everyone got them all.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I remember UK parents in the early 80s wondering whether to expose their sons to mumps

because of the fear of orchitis and sterility once they hit puberty (though it seems that is now thought to have been less of a problem than then thought - https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oumjBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161 ) . There was no regular mumps vaccination in the UK then.

[Kingofalldems]

21. Never heard of that until I was an adult.

I had them all myself.

[rzemanfl]

23. I had them all except mumps. Neither my father nor I ever got them despite being exposed

at play and in school.

[Vinca]

24. I don't remember anything like that, but I did have a memory this morning of

standing in a long line at the high school gymnasium to get the Salk vaccine.

[rzemanfl]

25. I posted about polio.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213022623

[Vinca]

31. I don't know why that memory came back so vividly this morning.

Makes me feel kind of old. LOL. Salk was before the Sabin oral vaccine was available.

[SoCalDem]

26. Several of us Moms had a chicken pox party

There were about 30 kids (mostly preschoolers) in our immediate neighborhood and they all played together and it was before a vaccine..

Instead of dragging it out kid by kid for several weeks/months, we got it all over with .. No babies were involved ..one of my sons must have had an innate immunity..he never got them at all

[lapfog_1]

27. My parents, thank god, believed in science

and real health care, including vaccines.

[rzemanfl]

30. There were no vaccines back then for measles, chicken pox or mumps. n/t

[irisblue]

28. No. Measles out break in '58 to 62 may have led to 2 of my aunt's miscarriages

Source--
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm

snip--"During 1958-1962, an average of 503,282 measles cases and 432 measles-associated deaths were reported each year "


Measle exposure to very early pregnant women is an increased possibility for miscarriage. I know Aunt Michelle blamed that for hers.

[dawg day]

38. I had a woman pediatrician who of course was constantly exposed to these diseases-

She had never gotten chicken pox, and got it when she was pregnant. The child was born with multiple problems (missing limbs), and had to be fed through a tube for years. He died at 5 or so. It could have been some other cause, of course, some other disease she was exposed to.

These were really terrible diseases, even if they didn't cause complications. I still have scars from chicken pox and measles.

[shanti]

42. Measles was a flat rash?

Didn't know you could scar from it, but almost everyone I've known that had CP as a child, has some sort of pock mark scar from scratching or picking their scabs. I have one on my temple. I remember mother dabbing calamine lotion on them.

[rzemanfl]

51. Yep. n/t

[dawg day]

57. Oh, I've always been a scratcher.

I got that awful impetigo skin disease from scratching at the scabs.

[radical noodle]

109. I did too!

There was not a spot on my body that wasn't covered with chickenpox and I scratched so much my mother finally put socks on my hands.

[cwydro]

86. I had chicken pox and a really high fever.

Still have some scars. Only six at the time, but remember the illness.

My mom would never have exposed us to illness purposely. Can’t imagine such a thing.

She quarantined me herself when I got German measles.

[Mugu]

29. Yes.

Attended parties for measles, mumps and chickenpox.

[Eugene]

32. Late boomer. Never heard of that until recently.

My parents worked closely with our family doctor and made sure we got all our shots.

[radical noodle]

111. There were no shots back then

for measles, mumps, rubella, or chickenpox.

[Meadowoak]

33. Mine did, I remember when she took me to visit my cousin who had chickenpox, so I would get it and

Be over it. She didn't want it to ruin our family vacation planned for a month later.

[dawg day]

34. No, we didn't have to be deliberately exposed.

Families were larger then, and if you had three siblings, one would always be bringing some bug home.

I remember we got chicken pox one after another-- my poor mother. 6 weeks of itchy sick kids!

[greatauntoftriplets]

35. Yes, mine did with me.

Either I had extremely mild cases of mumps and measles, or I didn't have them at all. The doctor was never able to confirm that I did. I definitely had chicken pox at 6 months and passed them on to my then 38-year-old mother.

Because that was in the pre-vaccine days, my mother wanted to assure that I never caught any of them as an adult -- due to how sick she was with chicken pox. So when a neighborhood kid had either mumps or measles, I was sent down to entertain them (whether they wanted it or not).

Never caught either, but the doctor still did not say yes. During last year's measles outbreak, I asked my doctor if I needed the vaccine. She said that I likely had developed immunity over the years.

[frogmarch]

36. Yes! Measles

in 1948. My older sister was sick in bed with measles and kept crying and begging me to come play dolls with her. My mom said we might as well get it over with because I'd get the measles anyway, so she let me sit on my sister's bed and play dolls with her. When she recovered, I was down with the measles, but she wouldn't come play with me. I was 4 years old and although I got over the measles, I'm still mad at my sister.

[stopdiggin]

37. vaccinations were what anybody with any sense did (and wanted for their children)

and I never heard of "intentional" exposure for the remainder.
Our parents had memories of the tragic "consequences" of some of the common diseases .. they were not fans of things like measles. Maybe different parts of the country had different attitudes?

[rzemanfl]

43. I don't believe vaccinations were available.

[stopdiggin]

53. for the boomers? certainly were for me! (nt)

[rzemanfl]

54. See post below regarding availability of vaccinations for mumps, measles and chickenpox.

Late boomers would have gotten two of the three. Chickenpox was still around when this early boomers kids were young and the all got it.

[stopdiggin]

59. oh we got chicken pox

but not because some moron thought it was going to be "good" for us!

1945 First vaccine for influenza
1952 First vaccine for polio (Salk vaccine)
1954 First vaccine for Japanese encephalitis
1954 First vaccine for anthrax
1957 First vaccine for adenovirus-4 and 7
1962 First oral polio vaccine (Sabin vaccine)
1963 First vaccine for measles
1967 First vaccine for mumps
1969 First vaccine for cancer
1970 First vaccine for rubella
1974 First vaccine for chicken pox
1977 First vaccine for pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae)
1978 First vaccine for meningitis (Neisseria meningitidis)
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated worldwide due to vaccination efforts
1981 First vaccine for hepatitis B (first vaccine to target a cause of cancer)
1985 First vaccine for Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB)
1989 First vaccine for Q fever[3]
1991 First vaccine for hepatitis A[4]
1998 First vaccine for Lyme disease
1998 First vaccine for rotavirus[5]

[rzemanfl]

62. Interested in the source for your list. n/t

[seaglass]

84. The chickenpox vaccine was not licensed in the US until 1995. Both of my kids born 1989

and 1991 got chickenpox before the vaccine was available.

[Ms. Toad]

94. As did my daughter, born in 1990.

It was available before she got the chicken pox, but we were still debating the vaccine because of autoimmune diseases that make balancing vaccinations more challenging. 1995 sounds about right for the timing - it was 1996-98 when we were wrestling with the question (and when she contracted a very mild case while we were still wrestling).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

85. Those years are not entirely accurate.

The Salk vaccine didn't come about until 1955. In 1954 it was tested among school children around the country. And since my sons, who were born in 1982 and 1987 did not have access to a chicken pox vaccination, it clearly was licensed well over a decade later.

[radical noodle]

113. Not for me

My mother would have had me vaccinated in a heartbeat had they been available. They were not.

[LAS14]

46. No vaccinations in my childhood, except Whooping cough, diptheria and ... and....???? nt

[Hekate]

75. DPT: Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetanus. Smallpox was separate.

Pertussis is whooping cough
Tetanus is lockjaw -- terrible seizures
Diptheria -- dunno the common name, except Mark Twain called it membranous croup because of the membrane that would grow over the airway and choke off the breath

They are all, all, killers. The fever and sore arm caused by the vaccinations are nothing like the actual diseases.

[rzemanfl]

49. First, short term mumps vaccine 1948. Improved upon in the '60s. (Wikipedia)

Chickenpox vaccine 1995 (WebMD)
Measles vaccine 1963 (Wikipedia)

[stopdiggin]

58. whatever was available .. we were getting them

because my parents thought you were an idiot if you didn't ..
from this list .. I would assume we got polio, mumps and measles ..?

1945 First vaccine for influenza
1952 First vaccine for polio (Salk vaccine)
1954 First vaccine for Japanese encephalitis
1954 First vaccine for anthrax
1957 First vaccine for adenovirus-4 and 7
1962 First oral polio vaccine (Sabin vaccine)
1963 First vaccine for measles
1967 First vaccine for mumps
1969 First vaccine for cancer
1970 First vaccine for rubella
1974 First vaccine for chicken pox
1977 First vaccine for pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae)
1978 First vaccine for meningitis (Neisseria meningitidis)
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated worldwide due to vaccination efforts
1981 First vaccine for hepatitis B (first vaccine to target a cause of cancer)
1985 First vaccine for Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB)
1989 First vaccine for Q fever[3]
1991 First vaccine for hepatitis A[4]
1998 First vaccine for Lyme disease
1998 First vaccine for rotavirus[5]

[Ms. Toad]

93. The MMR vaccine became available in 1971.

There were separate vaccines that started to become available in '63. I had mumps before '63. I was used to expose my siblings, in order to protect my father from 5 separate exposures to a disease he did not have as a child (and which is dangerous to an adult male).

Can't vaccinate when the vaccines are not available - so you do what you can to protect the most vulnerable (in this case, my father, since mumps were not a disease that carried many consequences for children).

[TygrBright]

39. Nope. Polio was still around...

...though it was slowly dying away with the Salk vaccine. Nevertheless, my parents had seen too many of their older contemporaries and sibs' kids come down with horrid diseases to take any risks. My sisters and I got all the vaccines that were available and my parents always reminded me how lucky we were.

Alas, there were no effective chicken pox and measles vaccines yet, so I got both.

Missed diptheria, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), small pox, and polio, though.

appreciatively,
Bright

[MaryMagdaline]

40. No but I remember parents keeping me out of school until chicken pox

Went away. I was no longer sick but had to stay home until they were certain I could not infect pregnant women and other vulnerable populations.

[Wounded Bear]

41. Intentionally? No. But they didn't panic about them, either...nt

[rzemanfl]

50. That was the way my parents were. n/t

[tblue37]

44. Like German measles parties for girls. nt

[LAS14]

45. Yup. Measles and chicken pox. I think it was a good thing because...

... it was known that measles, at least, was way worse in adults.

[kskiska]

47. Mine never did, and that was in the 50s when polio was still around.

I remember wearing sunglasses when I had measles, recommended by doctors.

[tavernier]

48. Not intentionally but didn't quarantine me from neighbor kids

when they had chicken pox. I had a mild case and then it was “don’t scratch.” It was kind of considered as a natural way to inoculate your kids, way back then. I suppose their parents did the same.

[The Genealogist]

55. Pretty sure that my dad did it to me, I am a GenXer

I hadn't had chicken pox. When i was in 8th grade my half sister got it when whe was 3. Dad assured me I'd had it, knowing that I hadn't. So, I helped take,care of her and of course got it. Pretty sure this was deliberate on his part.

[jeffreyi]

60. Yep.

The good old days. Of course the older siblings played a role, too. Wish the vaccines had been around then. Measles messed up my distance vision.

[BigDemVoter]

61. YES!

ESPECIALLY chicken pox. . .

[karynnj]

63. Yes!

I remember that when about 5 of my siblings and I got the chicken pox one hot summer. When my mom let us play in our backyard on the swing set, lots of the neighbor kids came over with their mothers. They knew that their kids were likely to get it and they wanted them to get it before school started.

This was the 1950s - no vaccines other than small poxes and polio I think.

[Aristus]

64. My dad was an RN, and I come from a smart family anyway, so we got our vaccinations.

I used to dread going in for my shots, but my Mom said they'd make me stronger.

We didn't have the MMR back then, and I got both the chicken pox and the mumps. But everything for which there was a vaccine at the time, I got.

I grew up on Army posts, so vaccination was overseen by the Medical Corp. I'd walk into a large room with guys in white uniforms in booths separated by scrub-green cloth partitions. I remember one of them handed me a paper cup with a pink sugar cube in it, and he told me "Drink this". I remember being confused that he asked me to 'drink' something solid, but I obeyed. I knew that the guys in white scrubs were people my Dad knew, so it was okay.

By the time I joined the Army, needles held no more terror for me. So while all the other enlistees were in line for their immunizations, cringing "No, man! It's gonna hurt!", I was cool and collected.

On edit: BTW, I'm Gen X, born in 1968. The period I described was roughly 1971 to 1976.

[Totally Tunsie]

65. Oh yes, and I came down with everything.

My most severe encounter was with the measles. I had them everywhere and remember it to this day. The chickenpox hit me shortly before a big school dance and it was a close call as to whether or not I'd be contagious. The doc cleared me in the nick of time.

As an only child, Mom sent me over to play with sick friends so that we'd all be through the process around the same time.

[mainer]

66. Yes. For chicken pox.

And I got it.

[procon]

67. No, but all us kids caught every sort of

childhood disease naturally. From measles, chicken pox, mumps, it seems like we were always sick, sometimes the secondary problems like a partial hearing loss, scars of the face, we're nearly as bad as the diseases.

My mom dragged us to every vaccine clinic, trying to protect us. I can't imagine any parent deliberately harming their children by forcing a contagious disease on them. They should be in jail, cold, callous and unfit to care for any living being.

[rzemanfl]

68. Did you read the whole thread? Jail seems a bit extreme.

[procon]

74. It's child abuse. When someone wants to deliberately

hurt kids, where do you want to draw the line? What's the difference between someone planning to get children infected with a contagious disease or breaking their arm, throwing them in cages or depriving them of food?

How much pain and suffering must an innocent little kid endure to appease some twisted, crazy parents and their conspiracy theories? Let's keep in mind that the kids are the victims here.

[Liberty Belle]

78. True if there is a vaccine. Before vaccines,for diseases worse in adulthood, I understand this.

Before there were vaccines, people worried about one form of measles that could cause miscarriages or other problems in pregnant women. The thinking was better for girls to have measles while young.

Mumps in adulthood could leave a man sterile. So better to have it as a child, if it couldn't be avoided.

Chickenpox, which was hard to avoid catching and usually without lasting impacts, would mean missing school for two weeks, so an older child could fall behind and have grades suffer.

Of course no sane person would ever expose a child to polio, which was usually either fatal or caused permanent lung damage. But some other diseases that were common before vaccines tended to be milder in young children than in adults.

[rzemanfl]

83. Mumps and measles and their effects on adults are "conspiracy theories?"

[Ms. Toad]

95. Nonsense.

The question is about an era when vaccines weren't available.

In that era, parents who missed childhood diseases were particularly vulnerable to diseases such as mumps - which are much more dangerous for adults, particularly adult males.

When there is no vaccine to allow the adult male to protect himself against the disease, and you have 5 children (as my parents did) or 7 (as my spouse's parents did), allowing nature to take its course places the vulnerable adult at risk for 5-7 separate multi-day exposures for periods as long as 10 days, it is much safer for the family, as a whole, to have all of the children have the relatively mild childhood disease than to expose the much more vulnerable adult seveal times over.

[Ilsa]

69. I had a microbiology professor whose younger daughter got chicken pox

from a neighborhood kid. He sent his older daughter over to get it. Said it was inevitable, and as parents, they'd rather have both of their kids sick at once.

[pnwmom]

127. That seems like a dumb thing for a microbiology professor to do.

If his younger daughter got chicken pox from a neighborhood kid, he wouldn't then have to send his older daughter anywhere to get it. She'd be exposed to her own little sister.

[Ilsa]

139. He wanted them both to have it at the same time,

not strung out over a month or more.

This was before a vaccine was available.

[pnwmom]

140. But by the time his younger daughter got it, she would have naturally given it to her younger sister

Actually, she would have been contagious for a while before she got it.

[treestar]

70. Yes, our friends got sent over

to us when we had the chicken pox and they didn't!

[malaise]

71. Just before Christmas one year one of my siblings came home with

chicken pox. Mom had it under complete control until dad caught it and then spread it to everyone else

[Hekate]

72. No. No. No. NO! I remember each and every one of those diseases from having caught them...

...and I remember my mother having to nurse us day and night thru the high fevers. The baby was seriously ill. She would never have done that on purpose.

Rubella probably did for the profoundly deaf boy we knew. I wonder how many other miscarriages in the neighborhood were also caused by rubella. The girl I met once who was the sister of a classmate of mine got the mumps like we all did, but she got encephalitis and was left permanently blind and crippled.

Son of a bitch, I hate this urban legend.

[Ms. Toad]

96. It's not a urban legend.

My parents used me to expose my siblings to mumps to protect my father from multiple repeated exposures that would have resulted in an illness that would have been very dangerous to him.

Similarly, before the chicken pox vacccine, we were given lollipops licked by a 2nd cousin who had it to expose us to the chicken pox.

[rzemanfl]

106. I think this thread establishes this is not an urban legend. n/t

[Liberty Belle]

76. Yes, I remember some parents doing that with chicken pox before the vaccine.

They knew school age kids would almost certainly get it and miss 2 weeks of school, so would expose them earlier to get it over with before they started grade school.

My parents didn't do this, but I knew of some who did.

Chicken pox rarely caused serious complications, far less so than the other childhood diseases, so that risk seemed small, while the risk of a child falling behind in school if they didn't get chicken pox until a few years later was significant.

It seemed weird, but sort of made sense for something that had no vaccine at the time.

[Fullduplexxx]

77. Pox parties is how you got your kids exposed to it

[C_U_L8R]

80. I had to stay home for a week

...while my sister had chicken pox. Mom put us together so I’d come down with it too. But I just didn’t get it. Got to see lots of little rascals, three stooges and bugs bunny. Think we ate yodels and screaming yellow zonkers. Good times.

[agingdem]

81. Yes!!

my mother would drag me from house to house whenever measles, mumps, and chicken pox were making the rounds of the neighborhood...nothing took until I was in my early 30s and my children came home with chicken pox and generously shared it with me...and while their bouts of chicken pox was relatively mild I was slammed...

[MuseRider]

82. I only remember getting small pox and polio in the sugar cube.

We all got measles, mumps, chicken pox. I do not remember getting whooping cough so maybe there was a vaccination for that then? I have had it twice as an adult so maybe there was not one and I got lucky as a kid. There were 3 of us so my mother just waited until one of us got sick and the other two followed.

My son had a friend whose mother was a day care provider. She called one day to tell me her youngest had chicken pox and if I wanted to bring my kids over they could get it and be done with it. Jesus, NO! She did not tell the other mothers and when they found out it was a mess for her. I was glad to see her busted for that.

[KWR65]

87. I'm not a boomer, but some parents would hold chicken pox parties in the 70's

so that their kids would get it and be done with it.

[applegrove]

88. My dad married a doctor. He was sick for the first years of my parents'

marriage. We hardly ever got to stay home from school if we were sick. All in all i think a mature immune system is better than one that has never been tested.

[trackfan]

89. Yep. That's how I got the mumps. n/t

[Ms. Toad]

90. Yup. I was the exposure vector for mumps - lollipop time!

My father had not had mumps, so he was banished to the "summer house"when I got mumps - and with 4 siblings, no one wanted to risk him getting mumps on 5 separate occasions.

[Spider Jerusalem]

92. That was a thing for chickenpox as late as the '80's or '90's

there wasn't a vaccine for chickenpox until 1995.

[MrsMatt]

99. My mother survived polio

She made damn sure that if there was a vaccine for a disease, we had it.

I'm carrying on the tradition.

[Polybius]

101. Wow, this really happened?

So glad I'm an Xer!

[Iggo]

102. Went to two Chicken Pox Parties. I didn't take...lol.

Mumps passed me by, too.

[TexasBushwhacker]

103. Only chicken pox

It seemed like EVERYONE got chicken pox, so they would go ahead and expose their kids when they were younger. The older you get it, the worse it is.

[MrsMatt]

107. Diagnosed with chicken pox aged 34

and 7 months pregnant.

Caught it early (only one blister) and was prescibed Accylovir and spent the night in a hospital.

[TexasBushwhacker]

135. Goodness! Glad you and the baby were okay

I had a friend whose teenager got chicken pox before they had any good antivirals. Not only did she have the blisters externally, she had them inside her nose, mouth and rectum. Poor thing was miserable.

[radical noodle]

104. Absolutely

My mother was a registered nurse and she made sure I caught rubella. The others I just got, but she purposely exposed me to rubella because of the danger to pregnant women who contract the disease. I had mumps in the second grade, then in the third grade I just made a year of it with chickenpox, measles, and rubella one after the other.

I think if I hadn't gotten the other things so early, she would most likely have exposed me to those as well. She knew that having mumps and chickenpox at an older age might be harder on me. I remember very little about my experience with measles and rubella, but I had a terrible time with chickenpox which started on my scalp. The itching nearly drove me crazy. My own daughter had chickenpox before that vaccine was developed.

I can remember my mother's relief when the polio vaccine was developed.

I guess I should add that 1) my mother would never have deliberately exposed me to polio 2) I was born in 1947 and there were no mumps, measles, chickenpox, or rubella vaccines when I was a child.

[customerserviceguy]

105. Not just no

but hell, no.

[rzemanfl]

108. It happened. Denying it doesn't change that. Different times,

no vaccines, childhood illnesses kids were nearly certain to get anyway. Dangers to both females and males later in life if they didn't get those diseases in childhood.

[customerserviceguy]

110. I sure wish

there had been a chicken pox vaccine when I was a kid, I wouldn't have had to go through the hell of shingles.

[rzemanfl]

112. Not until 1995 in the U.S. I am not sure whether the chicken pox/shingles connection

was known fifty or sixty years ago. I will endeavor to find out.

[customerserviceguy]

114. Whether it was known or not

at that time, clearly if I had received a chicken pox vaccine back in the 1960's, I wouldn't have had shingles.

Diseases don't make anybody's life better, at least as far as the sufferer is concerned.

[rzemanfl]

118. True on both counts. Vaccines can be risky too. Kids died from the Salk polio

vaccine in early trials if I remember correctly.

[customerserviceguy]

122. I don't remember that

but I may not have heard that.

[rzemanfl]

124. I read it in a book, years later.

Here is an article (publication may be anti-vaxxer) that cites to a book that appears legitimate-

https://thevaccinereaction.org/2016/01/the-salk-polio-vaccine-tragedy/

[rzemanfl]

116. The connection between the two was verfified in 1953. n/t

[Skittles]

120. I heard about this but I don't remember people actually doing it

my parents would never have gone for such nonsense

[rzemanfl]

123. Mine either, but I heard about it back in the day. Plenty of people here verify.

I was born in 1947. Nearly everyone caught chicken pox. measles and mumps. For some reason I was immune to mumps.

[Mossfern]

128. Yes, but not to "get it over with"

I remember when my best friend had Rubella (German Measles) and my mom sent me over to her house to hang out with her.
The issue was that Rubella is very dangerous for pregnant women and the developing fetus, so immunity at a young age was sought.
There was no vaccine for many childhood illnesses back then - I was born in 1948.

[rzemanfl]

133. Aware of that. I am male, born in 1947. For boys, mumps was the issue.

"Get it over with" was not the only motivation, although most kids then got the common childhood diseases from somewhere anyway. I got a kick out of the "church nursery" post somewhere above.

This has been an interesting thread.

[VOX]

134. Chicken Pox Party at mom's house!

The ONE “childhood” disease I didn’t catch, despite the exposure (my brother caught it). I did come down with a whopping case of mono at age 12, though— and that retrovirus is very similar to chicken pox. Go figure.

[Dem2theMax]

141. Yeah, it was called 'going to school.'

I was given every vaccine you could get. I still got the chicken pox, the measles, 3-day and 2-week kind, and the mumps on both sides. Apparently, I'm a walking incubator for germs. At least I was when I was a kid.