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I'm with Hanna on the annoyingness of this morning's NYT op-ed about British research into the effect of forward-facing strollers on children's language development. This "study" has more holes in it than a piece of openwork Irish lace. The lamest unsubstantiated conjecture (among the endless "mays" and "mights" and "anecdotal evidence suggests") is the claim that children "can easily spend a couple of hours a day" in the stroller. How many children, on how many days of the year? Are we talking waking or sleeping hours? (Most children I know conk out during long walks, thereby rendering them, by definition, nonverbal.) And even supposing this 2-hour mark is reached on a given day, are those two hours imagined to consist of unbroken silent trudging? Don't normal people wheel the stroller TO a place--school, a store, a friend's house--and "interact" with their child once they get there? Equally irritating is the author's casual leap from the statement that "social interaction fosters neurological development" (sounds incontrovertible enough) to the hand-wringing assumption that parents must therefore spend 24 hours a day up in our children's faces, yammering about every fire hydrant we pass. Couldn't they, and we, also get something out of taking a walk looking outward -- ie., at the world around us--and talking only when we have something to say?
Study upon study (backed by more solid data than the "observations" of "some" British teachers) has shown that parents of both sexes spend more time with their children now than they did a generation ago, and at least in the US, the current middle-class model of parenting is "interactive" to an eye-rolling degree. Thanks to this op-ed (which encourages parents not to feel worried, but "curious" about their newly discovered neglect), the crunchier-than-thou parents in my neighborhood are sure to start marching by in imported Swiss backward-facing strollers, "interacting" their way down the block as their children snack on pumped breastmilk and home-milled flaxseed crackers. Look, if my 3-year-old gets any smarter and more verbal than she is already, she's going to take my job. Can I please just plonk her in her beat-up forward-facing stroller and walk down the street in peace?
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I can not express how bogus and annoying I find this so-called stroller study mentioned by Emily. This is in fact a classic in the studies-designed-to-alarm-the-Bugaboo-set genre. Look at it closely. The researchers studied only whether caregivers who had inward-facing strollers talked to the kids more. Of course they did! The kids are facing them. I'm surprised the other parents talked to their kids at all. The rest of the "conclusions"—negative effect on language development, overall decline in linguistic abilities as "observed" by British teachers—is pure conjecture piled on conjecture. Of all the things that have happened since the collapsible stroller was invented in the '60s—mothers entering the workforce, extreme poverty in single-parent households, video games—we're supposed to believe the stroller is the culprit? All that will come out of this study is that Bugaboo gets to unveil an $1,100 model called the Bugaboo Laugh, because as the study authors helpfully point out, "the babies laughed more, too."
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Forget about feeling mommy guilt over which way your child faces as you wheel him along, Emily. Children need to feel separate from parents once in a while, even if you miss them a bit when they are facing away. Forward-facing strollers may or may not deprive your children of verbal-development benefits gained from eye-to-eye conversation, but I think parents of youngsters could make a big difference in that respect just by turning off their wireless handsets. Cell phones are the magic wand of parental helpers, but the attention-drawing mobile miracles must have a far more insidious impact on a child's communication skills than the seat on his pram. I'm not judging. There were no cell phones when I was raising my children. In 1972, when my daughter was born, I used cloth diapers and car seats hadn't been invented yet. When my son came 16 years later, snugglies and umbrella strollers (genius!) had made child transport mechanics much more manageable. If I'd had such a life-changing timesaver, I'm sure I would have neglected my children all day long, but fortunately for them, wireless communication was at least a decade off. Nevertheless, I'm struck by how often I notice parents and caregivers with small children in the park and at the grocery deeply engrossed in conversation on their cell phones. I'd like to see a preliminary study on the developmental effect of that.
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Reading about dangerous strollers this morning on the New York Times op-ed page, I thought about a hilariously dismaying chapter in Mary McCarthy's The Group. It's 1935 or thereabouts, and conscientious Priss Crockett takes her toddler, Stephen, to Central Park, where she bumps into a fellow Vassar alum, Norine Schmittlapp, whose is sitting on a bench with her baby. The women proceed to regale each other with polar opposite and equally crazy theories of child-rearing. Example: Norine gives her 3-month-old a pacifier; Priss is horrified. She tells Norine that the pacifier is unsanitary and can change the shape of a baby's mouth. Norine tells her a child sucks "because he's been deprived of oral gratification." Priss is unpersuaded. "For a child to find heaven in a dummy breast was the worst thing she could think of—worse than self-abuse. She felt there ought to be a law against the manufacture of such devices."
And now we learn, via a preliminary study in Britain, about the latest suspect device: the forward-facing stroller. According to the researchers, mothers (yes, it's ever mothers) talk less to babies who ride facing away from the person who is pushing them. This is not a good thing because babies' vocabulary build mostly from listening and laughing with their caregivers. (Quiet time, overrated.) This makes sense to me, to a point. I always felt a bit separated from my kids when they rode forward. The researchers appropriately include a short caveat about the significance of all of this: They say that babies spend a couple of hours a day in strollers, not all their waking hours. (Even that sounds high to me.) Still, the upshot is a general frowning upon the forward-facing stroller. Which, of course, most American and apparently British households with babies have. Suddenly, a seemingly innocent piece of baby equipment seems treacherous. It's blocking babies from learning to talk! The researchers don't call for a law banning the strollers. They've updated to the idea of an award, for an affordable collapsible stroller that faces both ways. Sounds great. But in the meantime, can we hold off on the mommy guilt for the strollers we already have?
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Emily, I also agree with the Obama ban on strollers at the inauguration, but not because the crowd needs to be protected from babies (and their means of transportation). Here I am wondering whether it will be safe to take newly minted teenagers into the crowds that day—most parents I know are leaning against it—and toddlers would surely be at risk, no?
Update: Oops, now that I have read Hanna's post, I take it back: I'm sure it will be fine!
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Emily, I, like you, am long past the days when I think I am entitled to bring my baby absolutely everywhere. I, too, have embarrassing memories of nicking ankles on the streets of San Francisco, or Brooklyn, or downtown D.C. and blithely walking on by as the offended pedestrians burned holes in my back with their eyes. But here is my current reality: I live here. I have three children, one of them an infant. I feel like missing the opportunity to witness this moment because of some small, boring concerns (he needs to nap, she will get tired, blah blah blah) is pretty depressing. And frankly, a stroller will make all the difference. There are only so many hours on a winter day you can hold a baby and satisfy two other children. With a stroller, I can just shove the baby in and the snacks on the bottom and be on my merry way. So yes, the Park Service is probably right, but they are seriously ruining my day.
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No strollers at the Obama inauguration? As a mother who once rolled her jogging stroller down crowded Market Street in San Francisco, front wheel blithely nipping at people's heels, I was all set to bristle over this. But you know what? That's an embarrassing memory. Strollers don't fit absolutely everywhere. Sometimes they cause trouble for other people, and sometimes, no matter how precious the children in them are, those other people's interests should win out. If the no-strollers proviso applied to the entire Mall, I'd be on the side of all those parents of toddlers out there who are now scrambling to figure out what to do with the 2-year-old. But it's only the 240,000 ticket holders for the swearing-in ceremony who are affected. If the Park Service thinks the space they'll be crammed into can't accommodate strollers or diaper-changing stations—well, maybe they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
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