Old Picture Postcards

Vintage Baby and Stork Postcards

Old picture postcards from our collection of vintage postcards featuring storks and babies!

More scans of old postcards featuring babies and storks are added as and when we acquire more :-)

In Western culture the White Stork is a symbol of childbirth. In the 19th century details of human reproduction were difficult to deal with, especially in reply to a child's query of "Where did I come from?" The answer "The stork brought you to us" was often given as a way to avoid the discussion of sex. This habit was derived from the once popular superstition that storks were the harbingers of happiness and prosperity, and possibly from the habit of some storks of nesting atop chimneys, down which the new baby could be imagined as entering the house. This is sort of picture has been a popular image on picture postcards since the 1890s.

The image of a stork bearing an infant wrapped in a sling held in its beak is common in popular culture. The small pink or reddish patches often found on a newborn child's eyelids, between the eyes, on the upper lip, and on the nape of the neck are sometimes still called "stork bites". In reality they are clusters of developing veins that soon fade.

The stork's folkloric role as a bringer of babies and harbinger of luck and prosperity may originate from the Netherlands and Northern Germany, where it is common in children's nursery stories. More old postcards.

© Magnus's Old Picture Postcards 2008