The XX Factor: What women really think.

Stroller Peril

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?