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

[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.)