"What does the saying, "throw the baby out with the bath wash mean"?

Answer 1

Back in the day when people bathed once a week on saturday night. Everyone bathed in the same water, the baby being the last one to get their bath. ... It is reference to the water being so dirty something could get lost.

Answer 2

The saying "dont throw the baby out with the bath water" first of all began in the old days in the west when you couldent get much water, what happened was when the did get water they would fill the tub and the tradition was, that the father, who was the head of the house hold would bathe first the the mom, the kids then last of all the baby, by this time the water was so dirty that you could have hardly seen the baby in the tub, hence the saying. I guess you can put multiple meanings nowadays, the one i know is "dont try to do too much, that you give up your morals" or "dont sell your soul to get ahead" thats one interpretation.

Answer 3

Another way to say it is "throwing the baby out with the bath water." I have always felt it meant some people miss the obvious. Who would take the time to bathe a baby and then forget to take the baby out when they threw out the dirty water!!!

Answer 4

Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
Sol Squire insists:

Bathing was not conducted this way in the 16th Century. There were public bathhouses, as few homes had the means to heat a substantial amount of water at one time. There is no literature stating that people bathed in the manner of man-of-house down to baby and the practical considerations of keeping that much water warm during such a ritual are not plausible.

Lastly, children of the 16th Century were bathed far more often than adults (see numerous works by J. Brundage, F. Braudel, M. Block, and many others) and anyone who has ever been charged with the care of an infant knows personally the obvious requirement to clean them daily. The notion that a mother of any century would lose her child in a bath of clouded, cold, and filthy water is laughable. The idea that this was part of a yearly infant cleansing ritual, as suggested above, is simply nonsense

Sol betrays his comfortable background here; yes, bath houses existed - but to suggest that poor people - often living in isolated hamlets or miles from any settlement - caught the bus to the nearest bath house is simply too fanciful for words - and besides, the limit on their credit cards would have stopped them using Public Baths. Bathing in the river was one possibilty, but for those lucky enough to possess a large tub, then filling that in front of the fire was a time honored tradition until very, very recent times in England (and almost certainly continues elsewhere).

Logic suggests the cleanest folk would use the water first - and throwing it away after just one person was a waste people were much too sensible to think of. So others went in the same water. If they were lucky, they got some of the water thrown out, and replaced with fresh hot water - but water would have boiled quick enough for all. And in practice, The Man of The House almost certainly went first, older brothers preceding younger siblings by whatever force they required.

You'd be pretty stupid to bathe the baby in clean water, as his bodily functions could foul the water for all - and any 'peeing' would be rewarded by a clipped ear.

Throwing the baby out with the water is what used to be known as 'a joke' - but if dad was a miner, or even a farm worker, not far from the truth.

Ian Moseley submitted:

When the proverb "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" or its parallel proverbial expression "To throw the baby out with the bath water" appear today in Anglo-American oral communication or in books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements or cartoons, hardly anybody would surmise that this common metaphorical phrase is actually of German origin and of relatively recent use in the English language.

It had its first written occurrence in Thomas Murner's (1475-1537) versified satirical book Narrenbeschwörung (1512) which contains as its eighty-first short chapter entitled "Das kindt mit dem bad vß schitten" (To throw the baby out with the bath water) a treatise on fools who by trying to rid themselves of a bad thing succeed in destroying whatever good there was as well. In seventy-six rhymed lines the proverbial phrase is repeated three times as a folkloric leitmotif, and there is also the first illustration of the expression as a woodcut depicting quite literally a woman who is pouring her baby out with the bath water. Murner also cites the phrase repeatedly in later works and this rather frequent use might be an indication that the proverbial expression was already in oral currency towards the end of the fifteenth century in Germany.

Answer 5

Stressful Mothers of the 1800's , wondering how they were going to survive . Doing everything they could to earn extra money to make ends meet , sewing , doing Laundry , helping other mothers to do their daily chores. and the stress of Mining employees that did not receive very much pay , but were big on Promises. Many fell victim to collapsing mines where their husband did not return from work . during such stressful times , The mother could not discern from reality of Laundry or Baby bath

Answer 6

it is " don't throw the baby out with the bath water"
it means not to throw something important away with trash
like if you are in a business deal and you have to cut corners to save money. Don't throw out a program or product if it is not moving quickly, because it might pick up in sales in a different time of the year.

edit it has nothing to do with abortion at all. it is just something people have always said about being careful of what you throw away, because it is in the middle of other things you are throwing away.

Answer 7

Fun Bob has this one right. I just learned what that was recently due to a joke email I got. But yep Fun Bob is right and deserves the 10 points.

Answer 8

The saying is "Don't" throw....

It means "In getting rid of waste, don’t also discard what is worth keeping."

I suppose you could use it in reference to abortion. But this is the original meaning.

Answer 9

Exactly what FunBob said

Answer 10

i think it means carelessly aborting your baby or that you dont care about your babys so much that you would throw (abort) the baby away as carelessly as you would throw out bath water.