Babies are occasionally switched at birth or soon thereafter, leading to the babies being unknowingly raised by parents who are not their biological parents. The occurrence has historically rarely been discovered in real life, but since the availability of genealogical testing of DNA has been discovered more frequently. The phenomenon has been common as a plot device in fiction since the 18th century.

In reality

In real life, such a switch occurs rarely. Since many cases of babies switched at birth are likely undocumented or unknown, the following is presumably not an exhaustive list. The below is ordered by birth year, if known.

Anti-switch techniques

Some hospitals take fingerprints, foot prints, or palm prints of newborns to prevent babies from being mixed up. Nurses also double check with the mother, checking the identity of that person as well, in order to prevent errors. Many hospitals also have policies in which a medical record number is assigned to an infant at birth, and bands with this number as well as the last name of the mother of the infant, the sex of the infant, and the date and time of birth are placed on the infant and the mother immediately after parturition before the mother and child are separated. A band may also be placed on the father (or other person chosen by the mother) at the time of birth.

As a literary plot device

The plot device of babies who are switched at birth, or in their cradles, has been a common one in fiction since the 18th century. It is one of the several identifiable characteristics of melodrama that are plot devices dealing with situations that are highly improbable in real life. The use of this common theme has continued ever since. The device was used a number of times by W. S. Gilbert, including in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas H.M.S. Pinafore and The Gondoliers. In both cases, well-born babies were switched with commoners. In the original version of the French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (1740) by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, Beauty is a princess whose fairy aunt switched her at birth with a merchant's dead daughter to protect her from an evil fairy who had attempted to kill her and had also turned the Prince into a Beast. Mark Twain later used this plot device in The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893), where two babies, one white and one black, are switched at birth, resulting in both passing for races that they are not. It is one of the themes that television films regularly exploited in the 1970s and 1980s. Possibly the most complex storyline involving the switched-at-birth plot device ran simultaneously on All My Children and One Life to Live, from March 2004 to February 2005. Involved were All My Childrens Bianca Montgomery and Babe Chandler, and One Life to Lives Kelly Cramer Buchanan, as well as many other characters. In the manga/anime Kakkou no Iinazuke, Nagi Umino, whose biological parents are hotel tycoons; and Erika Amano, whose biological parents are owners of a local diner, are actually accidentally switched at birth. When they become older, their parents agree to have the two engaged. An Indian film named Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, an employee switches his son Raj with his rich employer's son Bantu at birth. Knowing this after 25 years, the grownup Bantu joins the company without revealing his real identity to his biological parents to solve their problems and ends up taking the ownership of the company.