Babies switched at birth

[citation needed] 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.

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.

[40] 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.

[41] Involved were All My Children's Bianca Montgomery and Babe Chandler, and One Life to Live's Kelly Cramer Buchanan, as well as many other characters.