Putting Your Baby in a Cage Used to Be Perfectly Acceptable

Inequality by (Interior) Design, a blog by sociologist Tristan Bridges, turned one-year-old last month and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites. In a recent post, Bridges featured a product that reminds us all why history is awesome: the "portable baby cage":

As I discussed in a previous post, with industrialization came cities and with cities came crowded, cramped living quarters. The baby cage kept infants out of harm's way and gave the family a bit more space. As Bridges discusses, it also coincided with the idea that babies needed a lot of fresh air to be healthy. The baby cage seemed like the perfect solution.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post originally appeared on Sociological Images. Republished with permission. Images via Getty.