Conveyance

A poodle who will NEVER get into Harvard at this rate. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

If I told you that I got into an argument with a stranger on the internet (you may be tempted to stop me before I finish the thought) over whether it’s tantamount to child abuse to use a stroller, you might not believe me. Or maybe you would! My interest here is not in continuing the specific back-and-forth, so I am not guiding you to the arena where this occurred, nor naming names. What I am doing is expressing the apparently controversial view that you can put your baby in the usual conveyance for this and not harm them irreparably.

Anyway, I had posted something about the existence of anti-stroller discourse within what is, I suppose, attachment parenting circles. You should wear or hold your baby, is the thinking, as opposed to plopping them in the cold, harsh, unaccompanied solitude of the stroller.

Someone of course responded to say that she objects to putting children in “containers” (her word!) because… and here is where it got dicey. Something something development. Because children in strollers start walking later than ones who are, I don’t know, commanded to walk from the day they’re born. Because a child needs to interact with their environment, which a stroller for unstated reasons prevents.

I explained that in icy weather a stroller is better than a carrier, and got a lecture about the existence of warm layers for a baby. I spelled out that I meant in terms of ice on the sidewalks, and she responded something snarky like, am I saying pregnant women can’t go outside in the winter? that anyone without perfect coordination needs to be carted around? and I started to wonder if I was losing my mind.