I hear this expression a lot, most recently in the CNN debates about a couple of recent high profile murder cases: People shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. But who does that sort of thing anyway? It seems like a ridiculous expression to me.
First of all, I can’t even get a baby to fit through the drain in my bathtub. I’ve tried and I’ve tried and it just won’t work. So clearly these people don’t just let their bath water drain down the drain like a normal person with indoor plumbing. I guess they must, what, put it little-by-little into a pitcher and toss it into a dumpster? Because I doubt my pitcher would fit a baby in it either. Maybe I need a bigger one? But they must be doing something like that, because otherwise the expression would be: “Don’t let the baby go down the drain with the bath water”, right?
But seriously: Who throws out their bath water? Shouldn’t we recycle it?
No, if we want to discourage people from throwing babies away, the least we could do is use an idiom that makes sense so they won’t just laugh at us and throw the baby out anyway out of spite.
