When I was a child, and for generations preceding me, it was very common (almost universal) to seek out children with Chickenpox and to get your children infect

When I was a child, and for generations preceding me, it was very common (almost universal) to seek out children with Chickenpox and to get your children infected with it (something like 95% of all adults alive today went through this ritual). The reasoning being that the childhood version of it is relatively mild while getting it fresh as an adult was potentially deadly. I think when I was growing up the guidance was to get your kids the Chickenpox between the ages of 5-9. You'll notice the CDC guidelines points out certain age ranges as being dangerous, but curiously for the rest it's not much of a big deal. Since childhood infection was near universal, adults could easily take care of the children since none of them would likely get a new and potentially dangerous infection and for the children they got a week out of school and an itchy rash about as bad as a run-in with poison ivy -- another very common childhood right-of-passage in my part of the world. The vaccine simply didn't exist and wasn't in common use until I was well into CDC "dangerous" territory, but I had already had the pox by then anyways. Another anecdote, I have an adult uncle who didn't get Chickenpox as a child and ended up with it in his 30s, spent a spell in the hospital and had a very very rough time. I remember the discussions about it with my Grandmother where she was chastised for not having had him infected as a child properly. The connection between Chickenpox and the Shingles wasn't even really understood until the late 50s or 60s and I don't believe it really started entering popular consciousness as a related disease until at least the late 80s though it was widely known as being a disease of the elderly. My guess is that most people still don't know that there even is a vaccine for it. Point is, there are literally billions of people who've been through the childhood Chickenpox event, and it was the social norm until very recently to purposely infect your kids with the pox because there wasn't really much alternative and it was considered to be the safer practice.