Erin Fogarty : Auckland NZ : 1960s

I was a Plunket baby, as were most New Zealand baby boomer children.

This meant that right from birth I was raised under a regimen designed by Dr Frederick Truby King who, it seems, also happened to be the superintendent of a mental hospital.

Plunket gave every mother a book to raise her baby by. This was mine. It's pretty much blank.

Raising eight children, I'm sure my mother at times felt she, too, was the superintendent of a mental hospital and just as strongly felt an affinity with the late King.

King's ideology, dating from 1907, was to reduce an escalating infant mortality rate by "helping the mothers and saving the babies". He set up a society with a bunch of well-heeled Dunedin women, named it after an early patron, Victoria Plunket, and set about telling women how to do something they'd been doing quite successfully since Eve bit the apple.

His Plunket Society child-rearing methods, he claimed, had a dramatic impact on infant mortality which fell from 88 per thousand in 1907 to 32 per thousand three decades later — the lowest in the world.

But back to me. Having successfully raised seven children before my arrival, I doubt my mother needed much coaching in child-rearing and I admit that my Plunket Baby Record Book remains blank after my 16-week check-up.

However, photographic evidence proves Mother was following King's advice even if she wasn't keeping to his check-up schedule.

Fuelled by Glaxo I could easily have been the Truby King Plunket Poster child.

The accompanying photo shows a very "bonnie" baby sunbathing in her pram. Note the absence of shade, hat or suntan lotion. Note also the Glaxo-fuelled chubby cheeks and you're seeing what could quite easily have been the Truby King Plunket poster child.

King appears to have been obsessed with getting babies into the fresh air and sunshine. He advises putting baby outside "as much as possible during the day". He does concede to allowing baby into a well-ventilated room at night.

A suggested plan for baby's day was a 6am start for a feed, change and sleep. By 9.30am baby should be outside sunbathing, then put to sleep in a sheltered spot if possible, or on a balcony or verandah. At 2pm, you could change baby, feed and put outside again! From 4pm it seems acceptable to allow the baby back into the house.

I don't know how many babies were stolen during this period of not allowing them inside the house, and I can't find figures on infant hypothermia or infant sunburn, but Dr King's principles seemed to be that "Children should neither be seen nor heard."