Age

In its contemporary usage the phrase “robbing the cradle” connotes an older man dating or marrying a younger woman. But the phrase used to mean something different and unrelated to sex. Initially, it was employed in the Civil War era to describe the conscription policies of the Confederacy and was accompanied by a second part: “and the grave.” The Confederate army was so in need of soldiers that it was “robbing the cradle and the grave” in order to fill its ranks, drafting both the young and the old. In this usage the phrase is clearly dependent on age staging—the belief that some people should be considered too young or too old for military service—but it did not have anything to do with sex or marriage. As late as the 1940s the phrase “robbing the cradle,” now minus “and the grave,” was used to denote the signing of particularly youthful players to sports teams. A writer for the Los Angeles Tribune explained in 1944 of major league baseball teams’ recruiting practices: “Many teams are resurrecting old players—anybody with a spark of talent left. Others are robbing the cradle.” Only by later in the twentieth century was the transition to its current meaning complete; it had now been meaningfully repurposed to denote a practice that Americans found noteworthy: when an older man dated or married a girl or younger woman. In earlier eras, observers might have noted the occurrence of such a practice, but may not have found it particularly unusual.¹