Are Strollers Evil?

I think it's a bit weird when I see 4-6 year olds being pushed around town in strollers. I think 1-3 is ok. I guess the idea is that we want the kids to get used to the excersize that is "keeping up with the adults".

I think that I see so many older kids in strollers because I live in the city. When families come in and plan to be walking a great deal, having a stroller at the ready for tired tots might seem like a good idea.

I guess not having a stroller means carrying the kid a bit more as well as letting him/her walk on his/her own a bit more.

Strollers are for moms in a hurry. It's pretty obvious that they don't provide the child with any developmental growth skills. They're akin to those walkers that non-walking babies could tiptoe around the house in (I don't know if they're available anymore -- they were getting bad press 18 years ago.)

I hardly used strollers myself, except when we were at some sort of exhibition, like the state fair, or the zoo... and then the stroller usually carried lunch. My kids hated to be confined in a stroller. We had a British-made perambulator when they were really small -- now those were totally impractical for my lifestyle! The Snugli-type packs were the best for us for transporting young ones. We had three different models -- one simple open one that I liked the best, a real corduroy Snugli and a frame backpack.* I also had these stretchy bracelet loops that linked me to the kids. My two were just a year apart. It was chaos trying to go anywhere! People would say that I had them on the leash... but they had lots more freedom and exercise. We walked very, very slowly.


*When I lived in Alaska, I learned about the way the Eskimo ladies carried their toddlers. The mom would wear an extra large parka with a good strong belt. She'd put on the parka and then either scoot the baby inside or tell the older child it was time to "tootoo" and the child would pull up the back of the parka and lean in. The coat could envelop both of them, and the belt would keep the child from slipping out. It was ingenious.


edited to add: Here's a book about strollers that my kids thought was really funny when they were young.


Pig Pig Grows Up

Yeah.

I had a very "Yes, but" response to this article. It totally bothers me when I see older toddlers (or even younger ones) vegged out at the mall in their strollers. But I think the author is showing naivete in saying that people should walk all the time... it takes patience, yeah, but too bad, it's worth it.

We almost never drive... we take probably three kinds of walks. One is a walk for walk's sake, sozlet takes the lead, if she wants to sit there and poke at an anthill for 15 minutes, I stand there and watch. One is a walk that has a goal, but if something interesting is seen, we still stop and look at it.

But the third type is where I think Crain, while well-intentioned and making good points, is wrong. For example, we have a 3-hour window to do something. The playground is about a 20-minute walk by stroller, a 5-minute drive by car, a 45 minute walk of the second type, and a 1.5 hr walk of the first type.

If the point is to get to the playground, and that is sometimes the point -- to socialize with other kids, to swing, to slide -- I don't see anything wrong with taking the stroller, especially as opposed to the car.

My son refused to ride in a stroller once he was walking well. I find it disgusting when I see a kid that's 4 or older in one. The other day I saw one about that age that actually still had a pacifier, too! No kidding...a real one, not the candy kind! The kid pulled it out of his own mouth, popped it into his pocket, folded up his own stroller and handed it to his mom. My son, who is now 9, looked at me with a horrified expression on his face. I'm sure my face looked the same.

Honestly, I know some parents who won't do anything that is inconvenient. I am surprised some of their kids ever learned to walk.

I think a stroller is fine in the 1-3 age group, though I'm way beyond the parent track. I see them on one and three mile walks in our river park, and no way could the kid handle that kind of hike. They're really better off being included than left at home with one parent or the other, in my opinion.

I've got friends who are fairly active - lots of canoeing/camping etc. Their kids never really had strollers. Once they were walking and out of snuglis - they walked. One couple used those British harness type things. The kids loved them. They could wander around, knew they were safely attached to an adult. It seemed win-win, though rushing anywhere was not an option.

The stroller thing seems to be very much something for an urban, car-oriented family, that is goal-focussed vs. child-focussed. I guess it depends where you are on that spectrum.

It was long ago, but back in the dark ages we didn't drive to the supermarket, or the toy store, or much else. I used to push a twin stroller, with my two and a half year old being occasionally bratty about it. Had a minor problem in that the boy twin was walking outside at 9 months while the twin sister didn't even sit up for 10 months.. SO I often pushed an empty carriage, carrying the one, while the elf danced beside me, and the older one started discovering the world of pavement.

Thing is, I walked all over, pushing the carriage, and the kids were both in and out, walkig and not, and that's how we got around. Nobody ever thought very much about it,because that's how we did it. I can understand the worry about natural exercise today. Cars are so available in families that it's just assumed that the 16 yer old will take one. Used to be the bike and roller sktaes. And with the car comes the stop at the food place. But times change..

When it comes to walking infants, I was all for it. More work, but what substitutes for watching a new walker naigate triumphantly?

Thanks for the interesting responses, everyone.

littlek, yeah, I think the choice is not always between walk or take the stroller. E.G. takes a regular non-stroller evening walk with the sozlet, and often carries her for a lot of it. (Her decision.) That's not always practical for me when we're doing errands. (I used a snugli all the time when she was very little.)

Piffka, yeah, the zoo is one of those places where a stroller is really helpful. The other day sozlet, Jack, Jack's dad Jason, me, and Alexander (1yr old) spent the day at the zoo. Jason brought a side-by-side stroller for the kids, who sat in it without straps, tickled, carried on conversations (SO cute), and hopped out whenever we stopped. Alexander rode in a backpack. There were a lot of kids at the zoo, we were there for 5 hours, and the stroller was really, really useful.

Eva, sozlet went through a phase where she refused the stroller too. That was fine with me, and we just didn't use it or used the car more for a while. Then she decided she liked it... she almost always is in and out, though.

roger, right, exactly.

ehBeth, I agree about the importance of taking leisurely walks, the #1 and #2 categories I mentioned above. Can't imagine taking a stroller camping... I disagree that using a stroller at all puts of you at the goal-focused vs. child-focused end of the spectrum, though. That's what I object to in the op-ed piece, too. As Mamajuana says, for those who walk all over to do everything, a stroller is a way to be both, IMO. I don't see how strapping them in a car seat and driving is better, and it's not practical to meander along at the 1.5 hr pace all of the time.

Twins! Wow. I don't think I knew you had twins, mamajuana. And a 2.5 yr old at the same time?

sozobe - i think part of it is the 'urban' thing. My best friends live on a farm on the Canadian Shield. Strollers are simply not an option there. If they are going to drive into town with the kids, then walking is what is going to happen at the other end. We started taking their kids to the fair here, when each of them was 2.5. 10 to 12 hours of walking - no strollers. Their kids were both walking on the Pacific Rim Trail before they were 4. Their lifestyle never had a space for strollers, so the kids got used to walking/hiking with packs very early. The fanny packs thing on the Lesbian Parents thread made me think of them. Martin was carefully evaluating fanny packs at the fair at age 3 - he needed a new one for day hiking. It probably was one of the funniest shopping adventures I've ever been part of.

There were definitely times I wished those kids were in strollers, but it wasn't my decision to make - and I think those parents made the right decisions for their family.

It's clearly got to be individualized, but I do think we all make decisions that are to our benefit, not necessarily the benefit of everyone involved. I know that when friends bring their toddlers to my house, for me to take care of them, I always remind them to bring a stroller. I'm an urban care-giver, and I want that stroller option. ( I would NOT have been a good rural parent )

Good point, ehBeth.

I was an older mom...almost 40 when my son was born. My toddler had WAY more energy than me. He could still walk for miles when I was worn out...even at the age of 15 months. He NEVER got tired before I did!

I guess my problem is with parents who use them as an easy out...to control their kids instead of teaching them how to behave in public. I think it's good for little kids to learn to walk holding an adult's hand in crowded places. It just takes more patience on the part of the parent. I have friends who had three small ones at the same time, and they taught them always to hold hands with each other. That's the way my son's day care did it, too.

Love the idea of a three-year old picking out a fanny pack.

Have you ever been to a fair or other exhibition where someone uses their stroller to gouge the ankles of the unwary? Or where an entire flotilla of strollers blocks the path? At the fair last Friday I was chatting with a woman who had darling twins, a boy & girl, sitting in a pair of strollers. An elderly woman came up to us and started fussing with her about being careful with the strollers. Whew. I think she was complaining in general, not about a specific incident with the mother, but she was wet-hen angry about it. We smiled and shook our heads a little in commiseration -- hope it didn't spoil the mom's day.

We hiked a lot with our kids and have a proud photo of them at three & four years old, standing by a trail sign after they hiked the Naches Peak Loop Trail. It was no problem at all for the older one -- the young one spent some time being carried, but did most of it himself. They were careful on the steep spots and loved the freedom of playing in the shallow little lakes. We had one rule on the trail that was said with a smile -- if you fall, you get a spank. They were pretty sure we were kidding but it kept them from dashing about.

Yeah - unexpectedly. Woke up on the table, and heard a nurse say "wait, there's another one." My biggest reactiion was hunger. I was starved. And I tried to sell my older one for months.. She was so diificult at the twins were easy, preemies and all. Not an easy life.

But we walked all over, and a stroller was a necessity, for the kids, the shopping, the bottles.

I'm a baby person. I melt when I see strange little kids walking on the street.

But I think walking is becoming a lost art. Jogging, faast-stepping - all solitary things, where walking with your baby doesn't last too long.

That's a great point, mamaJ. That time of walking with a baby is so fleeting. Seems like an eternity when you're trying to get around the block, but it's not.

Re: Are Strollers Evil?
(Edit: Minor but annoying grammatical error corrected)

Interesting indeed, but maybe not in the way the author intended. I think the article tells us more about its author's attitude than about the mistakes of parents who use strollers for their toddlers. And William Crain's attitude really annoys me. To stay with the quotes you already posted:


Attitude problem #1: overselling the evidence. As Abraham Lincoln didn't quite say, you can keep some toddlers walking all of the time, and you can keep all toddlers walking some of the time. But you cannot keep all toddlers walking all of the time. As expected, Mr. Crain's evidence tells us that some parents walk some of their four year olds in strollers some of the time. But he concludes that today's parents "seem bent on keeping their children strapped in strollers", which is a very long shot indeed.


Because in the dark ages preceeding the last few years, children were severely understrolled. This was caused by a mysterious disease among parents called "Strolling Deficit Disorder" (SDD). Fortunately the disease was eventually identified, and doctors throughout the nation moved quickly to fix it ... Oh yeah right, they didn't, because doctors don't earn any money by selling strollers. But sarcasm aside, this quote serves well to illustrate attitude problem #2: When past behavior is different from present behavior, it must be because yesterday's parents got things right and today's parents get things wrong.


Note that the author doesn't tell us about how many days a year, and how many hours a day, parents use the stroller. I suspect it would have made his story much less impressive.


Yes, but toddlerhood is also a time when a child unpredictably gets cranky and tired from one minute to the next -- preferrably when you can't carry it because you have both arms full of grocery bags. Then what? Here we see attitude problem #3; actually it's more like a fallacy: 'A toddler's needs are constant over time'. It will hardly surprise any mother in this thread to learn that they aren't.


Now we are getting from annoying to really annoying. Yes, parents should try to keep their children exploring. But they also should try to get their shopping done, to finish the walk soon enough before they head off to the movie, and avoid ruining their spine when a walk is too long and a stroller would save them from carrying a non-trivial weight for several miles. Life is full of tradeoffs. If children spend more time in strollers and less time walking, it's probably because their parents are now facing different tradeoffs than they used to. (Layoff anxiety, anyone?) Instead, Crain concludes that today's parents have somehow become too stupid to take advantage of obvious opportunities.

It is this attitude problem -- #4, if I counted correctly -- that bothers me the most: The theorists of parenting know better than the people who actually do the parenting work. So please ignore this post -- I'm strictly a theorist of parenting myself, though I do have some uncle-ing experience.

-- T.

I was the oldest of eight and I can not recall my parents ever using a stroller. Once we could walk we were expected to walk. When we were older and we wanted to go long distances we were expected to use out bicycle, my parents did not assume they ran a taxi service. As a result from an early age I had the assumption that getting some where might involve a lot of walking and as a result still do.

Thomas, I'm not sure what it's like where you are, but I can tell you that here in Toronto it sometimes does seem like some parents are never going to let their children walk because it will slow them down. When I'm out with the dogs, I see many people pushing children in strollers - children who are old enough to walk - perhaps walk slowly, but walk. Children who are noted, night after night, to be trying to get out of their strollers. These are the children who seem to be dressed to match their parents, and whose stroller matches the dogs' leash. The children seem more like lifestyle accessories than anything else.

There are clearly extremes, and an op-ed piece is not going to be interesting if the middle is studied. That of course is the joy of the op-ed piece - if it's challenging it will cause people to talk, and think. Or think and talk in the best cases.

Yeah, I started this discussion in part because I thought the answer lay in the middle ground. I DO think that people rely on strollers too much. The sozlet is often the only un-strollered child when we are out for a category #1 or #2 walk, or when we go non-grocery shopping. (She is in the grocery cart there, usually, or pushing her own cart at Trader Joe's, another reason I like them. )

There is this whole eyes-glazed-over lumpish thing that freaks me out when we see the many, many strollered children while non-grocery shopping or on walks. A frequent occurrence is for the sozlet to walk up to a kid of a similar age, in a stroller, at a clothing store and try to play. She always gets a blank look for a while. They're just vegging.

BUT, I also think the other extreme is silly, for a lot of the reasons that Thomas points out. IF people can make do without a stroller at all, such as ehBeth's rural friends, excellent. (Though we could get into relative environmental impact of driving for errands/shopping vs. strollering...)

Here is an excerpt I hadn't posted:



So he's talking about urban areas, too. It's safer, it's more convenient, but that's just too bad.

Again, I really do agree that strollers are over-used, I think he goes too far with his conclusions.

mamajuana, wow! No preparation, either. I can't quite imagine.

From what you posted, soz, this seems to be his conclusion. And as I read your posts - this is also your view. I think we're all pretty much in the same place on this.

I am a bit wary of those jogging, excercise-obsessed moms who jog while pushing the baby around in those 'racing' strollers...doesn't seem like 'quality time' to me.