Are Strollers Evil?

Cav, yeah.

ehBeth, I guess it's how you read it -- I saw "take a child's hand to cross a street" as saying that even "active control" can (and by implication, should) be done sans stroller. That you should just allow for as much time as necessary to do something while walking.

My central complaint is that he seems to only compare using a stroller with walking, and not using a stroller with driving. Today the sozlet had a class to go to that started half an hour after she woke up. After she ate, brushed teeth, and got dressed, we had 10 minutes to get to class. It was a 10 minute walk by stroller, but a half hour walk without. 5 minutes including parking with car. We zoomed with the stroller, she laughed and pointed at various things, said "faster, faster!" and we were just a couple of minutes late.

If he went just a little further, then, I wouldn't have a qualm. If he said, "These are the benefits of walking vs. using a stroller, and these are the disadvantages to using a stroller too much. Of course, there are times when a stroller is the best option." But I read the excerpt above as saying nope, never... hold their hand if you must, tell 'em to walk faster if you must, but no strollers.

I really didn't think the op-ed piece was saying strollers are evil, and should never be used - I think he was talking about over-reliance on them.

I also think you have to look at it as an opinion piece, not a piece of research with scientific conclusions.

It's one man's opinion that too much stroller use, instead of allowing children to walk and enjoy, is making kids lazy. I don't think you're the kind of parent he's talking about, sozobe. I think you're the parent he'd like the stroller-addicted to emulate.

Yeah. I think he tried to make it scientific, though, with the survey and facts and figures.

But I basically agree with your points that there really are people who rely on strollers too much who are his target audience, and about it being the nature of the beast (Op-Ed). Some Op-Ed pieces manage to do both, though -- hold strong opinions while presenting valid science to bolster them -- and this annoyed me for what he was implying (IMO) without coming out and saying.

Oh and I agree that he wasn't saying that strollers are evil -- that was my own rhetorical flourish. I had called this thread "Strollers", just that, and noticed nobody was looking and figured it was being mistaken for a discussion of the best kind of stroller to get, so I added the "Evil" bit. So I guess I'm being pottish if I'm accusing Crain of overstating the case to get attention.

I totally agree. The piece would have annoyed me much less if he had written a column along the lines of "When I was walking through downtown Manhattan yesterday, I spotted a curious thing: Children aren't walking anymore -- They're all being strollered around by their parents these days, yadda yadda yadda." Instead he tried to give his article the appearence of being scientific, but didn't give it the substance of it.

The piece wouldn't have annoyed me at all if Crain hadn't presented strollers as something you are either for or against. As I said, life is full of tradeoffs, and the mere fact that strollering is on the rise doesn't tell us that something bad is happening per se. For example, take the experience on my evening jog yesterday, when this thread made me watch out for parents, children and strollers. My most frequent sight were fellow joggers who strollered their children in a baby jogger.

You couldn't observe this when I was a kid. My father used to jog evey evening when he was my age, but that was before the baby jogger was invented, so he had no way of taking us with him. If we are seing more parents with baby joggers today, this might actually reflect an improvement. Parents might be spending more time outside with their kids instead of having them sit around at home. As an aside, note that in this case, no op-ed columnist would have been at home with them to observe the fact and complain about it. Visibility matters!

My second most common sight were parents with two children, the older one walking, the younger one being strollered. In one case, the older was trying to hitch a ride on the stroller. As I ran past, he complained to his mum how unfair it was that his brother was being strollered and he wasn't.

All this is strictly unscientific of course, but to answer Ehbeth's question, I'd say my observations yesterday evening were a quite typical experience where I live. So my more extreme opinion of the article may well reflect difference in how much American and German toddlers walk. There must be some reason why you see so much more obese children in American streets than in German streets, and this may well be one of them.

Some interesting replies in today's NYT Letters to the Editor Section:

Loving Strollers: My Child Is Safe, I'm Sane (3 Letters)
to the Editor:

Re "No Free Ride for Toddlers," by William Crain (Op-Ed, Sept. 6):

When I take my 7-year-old daughter to a big department store or to the mall, I use a stroller or a cart. Why? Because I want to make sure that she is safe and in a place where I know that she is at all times.

We live in a crazy world these days. A world of terrorism and one of lurking child molesters.

My daughter can exert her "freedom and curiosity" in her own backyard, in her room with her toys or in a controlled environment, like the local playground, where I can keep a good eye on her.
ELIZABETH M. BACON
Blairstown, N.J., Sept. 6, 2003

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To the Editor:

Re "No Free Ride for Toddlers," by William Crain (Op-Ed, Sept. 6):

I take a daily ride along my town's bike and jogging path, and often observe jogging parents pushing toddlers in strollers and parents on bikes pulling carts occupied by toddlers.

I have never seen a child in these situations who looked relaxed or happy. The toddlers' brows are furrowed, and their faces bear the look of fear or resignation.

I applaud Professor Crain's research on parental overuse of strollers, and I hope that he will do more of it.
LAURA S. SMART
DeKalb, Ill., Sept. 6, 2003
The writer is a professor of family and consumer science at Northern Illinois University.

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To the Editor:

Re "No Free Ride for Toddlers," by William Crain (Op-Ed, Sept. 6):

While Dr. Benjamin Spock and Professor Crain may believe that when a baby has learned to walk, it's time to let him out of his carriage or stroller, this mother of twin 2-year-olds and a 2-month-old would like to propose a different point of view.

I love my stroller.

The stroller is my freedom. It is my sanity. It allows us to get out of the house, take a walk, explore the park or go to a friend's house to play.

Without it, we'd truly be homebound. And that would not do much to foster my toddlers' sense of freedom and curiosity, never mind my sanity.
ANNIE LONG SULLIVAN

The topic of strollers came up at work twice this week. Once, in regard to a claim I got - the kind I hate the most - where a parent has pushed a child in a stroller into the road, then stepping out to check the traffic. I've never seen a claim resulting from a hand-held child being used as a traffic wedge. I've seen a few too many where the stroller, with the child strapped in, was used to 'test' the traffic. It absolutely infuriates me. It was the source of more than one Abuzz rant on my part.

Then I spent a day at truck driving school. And what was included in the instructors' rants? Strollers, and people not seeming to realize that they need to step out and look, before entering the roadway with a stroller. Trucks need a long long long time/distance to stop (we did in-truck demos - it's frightening to see how long), they can't stop on a dime when the stroller appears in front of them. Two of the trainers specifically said they didn't use strollers in their families, as a result of their experiences. Strollers in store parking lots were mentioned as particular bugbears by a few of the participants.

Rant rant rant.

I know that good parents can use strollers safely, and wisely, and appropriately, but right now - I really hate strollers.