Imagine if someone told you it was possible to purchase a device that would greatly increase your child's safety, that could, in fact, save your child's life - but there's a catch. This device will be virtually impossible to install correctly and even after you've hired an army of experts to help you unravel this Gordian knot, you may likely be in foul. Those with kids under 12 years of age don't need to dream. They have child car seats: mandatory, expensive, and more difficult to calibrate and engineer than a NASA space mission.
Now, if you're someone who has sworn never to have kids and thinks anything written about children or child-related subjects is nothing more than insipid tripe spooned up by self-involved bourgeois fools play-acting out-dated domestic institutions, then, you may want to give this column a pass. I'll understand, and, may I add, that Evolution and I approve of your decision not to procreate. Trust me. You're doing the responsible thing.
Those who are interested (safety-conscious parents or bewildered grandparents) know that child car seats first appeared in the 1960s and at that time were primarily adopted by what were then considered hyper-vigilant parents (e.g. people who did not think kids should be given lighter fluid and high explosives in birthday loot bags). Prior to their invention, child car protection generally consisted of a patent leather belt strung across the back seat and a rabbit's foot.
The fact that car seats never occurred to anyone until the 1960s says a lot about how folks viewed children (basically, as small adults who did not yet smoke). In fact, the Internet is full of strange ravings by boomers who view child car seats and bicycle helmets as perverse scams designed to weaken our youth in preparation of whatever foreign invasion eventually hits North America. It's a strain of thinking epitomized by a chain e-mail entitled "To Those of Us Born 1930 - 1979." Here's a taste:
"We had baseball caps, not helmets on our heads. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat."
The implication is that this safety-less paradise was a natural state of being. And give these Leno-loving Jefferson Airplane enthusiasts their due, it was more natural. Of course, there's nothing more natural than death. The correct reply to those who pine for more carefree times is that the result of not having child car seats and bicycle helmets was pretty straight forward: lots of people, namely children, died. Thing is, they're not around to call attention to this fact because they never grew up.
By the 1970s, civil liberties were being infringed upon by the usual suspects: doctors, traffic engineers, scientists, academics, people who actually knew what they were talking about. These so-called experts lobbied hard to take away a parent's right to have their kids bumping around in the back seat like a loose bag of groceries. By the early 1980s, child car seats were mandatory. It was illegal for a kid to ride in a car unless junior was secured in a car seat that met crash-test standards.
Of course, no one lobbied harder than the car seat manufacturers. Today in America, according to Freaknomics authors David D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (note the "J" to differentiate him from all the other Stephen Dubners) child car seats are a $300-million market.
The latest car seats run anywhere between $300 and $14-million dollars and come with 100-page instruction books. The experience of installing one is similar to deactivating a bomb, because if you make one mistake, the entire process is negated. And what if you fail to properly install it? Your child is in mortal danger, so, no big pressure. Those hoping to find help online may be disappointed by what's on offer. For instance, the answer provided by childcarseats.org.uk to the problem "Child Is Too Big or Small for Car Seat" is "Make sure that your child is the right size and weight for the seat."
Wow, thanks for that.
The sad truth is that experts say upwards of 80 per cent of seats are not properly installed. It's a recipe for sleepless nights. Where there's fear there's money and there is now an industry built upon these anxieties. Most parents who can afford it have experts install their car seats or go to one of the free installation clinics offered by local police forces.
The upside to all this obsessing is that properly installed car seats save lives. According to America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration they reduce fatalities in those under five by 54 per cent compared to unrestrained children. Child car seats have an added bonus in that they can be employed to "disarm" grandparents who fear car seats the way primitive people might have feared the first airplane. On the opposite side, they can also provide granddad with a little quiet satisfaction. After all, is there anything more comic than a parent struggling to coral a toddler correctly into a car seat who actually thinks this is as hard as it's going to get?
Andrew Clark