Time to get babies out of their buggies so they can stand on their own two feet

THIS is a plea for Government to appoint a new Regulator. We’re up to our armpits in regulators for everything these days.

They regulate energy. They regulate telecoms. They regulate financial institutions.

They don’t regulate baby buggies. Nobody regulates baby buggies, and so the baby buggy is recklessly endangering us all by its mad growth.

The baby buggy, today, is somewhere between a jumbo jet and a Sherman tank: it can transport people, freight and catering supplies, and it can mow down the opposition at one and the same time.

Ben Hur’s war chariot was a minor threat compared to today’s baby buggies, and I’m sorry I mentioned Ben Hur, because that will be the next refinement: baby buggies will develop wheel-spikes to keep the enemy at a distance.

Once upon a time, a vehicle called a pram carried the children of stay-at-home mothers when those mothers had to go to the shops. The pram was somewhat like a swing-boat on wheels. BIG wheels. It allowed a baby to see its mother, which has advantages. It had a false floor, so the mother could secrete purchases therein.

Two advances in infant technology put paid to the pram. One was the papoose, allowing parents to carry their babies fore or aft. The other was the walking-stick baby buggy. The latter looked like a bunch of walking sticks had got together with a few wheels and a bit of canvas. It was light. It folded up to almost nothing. It was dirt cheap.

Papooses stayed modest. Some of them are so modest, you’re not sure whether it’s a baby that’s in the scrap of fabric or a broken arm.

Buggies did not stay modest. Buggies lost the run of themselves. Buggies grew and swelled and became baby-carrying behemoths. Buggies turned into the SUV of infant transport. Three of them, being re-assembled on an air-bridge as passengers leave a plane, take up as much space as a broken-down bus in the middle of a motorway.

The ones built for triplets or quads (in response to the multiplicity of baby created by fertility treatments) are so big, they should have garda outriders.

Now, if the Supersize Me buggy had evolved just to ensure baby safety, that would be fine. But these buggies did not so evolve. Supersized baby buggies are the containment pond of paediatric management. Almost every chemical company has a containment pond. It sits, down-hill from the plant, waiting for the day when something spills or overflows. On that day, the containment pond gets its break. Becomes a hero. Captures all the toxic stuff and prevents it getting into the water supply where it might turn us all luminous or force us to shower in bottled water.

A containment pond literally contains the problem. Ditto the baby buggy.

Strap a child into one and you can take it to the shopping mall without the fear that it will run around, climb steps, knock things down or fall over; all the useful developmental things toddlers want to do because they help children learn the world around them, explore danger and cope with consequences. Buggies prevent all that and, because they’re low on the ground, obviate toddlers seeing a lot of stuff they might want to explore. They are the perfect mobile containment pond for children, delivering immeasurable benefits for the adults involved.

One of the benefits for adults is fitness. Those buggies that come to a single-wheel point at the front which have over-sized wheels and a suspension system a Beamer might envy, were first sold as Jogger Buggies.

The selling proposition was that parents could do their three-mile run while pushing the baby ahead of them. The buggies even had cute little gadgets to hold the parent’s ginseng-saturated fitness-water within reach.

Now, you don’t see many owners of these SUVs actually jogging, but you do see thousands of these vehicles being bought every year. The buggy now rivals the old pram in size, elaborate carrying-capacity and cost.

But then expense is no object when it comes to purchasing a child-vehicle. Each parent is persuaded that nothing is too good for their baby, so if their baby buggy costs e300, that isn’t an issue.

Except that “baby buggy” is the wrong name, these days. Call it a Toddler Buggy. Indeed, if the trend continues, a couple of years down the road, we’ll be calling it a Primary School-goer Buggy.

HAVE you noticed the size of children in buggies these days? Walk around any shopping centre and you’ll see them. Children aged two, three or four.

Not children with disabilities. Children perfectly capable of walking.

Children who NEED to be walking. But it’s so much handier for the accompanying adult to stick them in a buggy and use the buggy to cart the shopping.

The problem about this use of the buggy as a luxurious conveyance/prison for older children is that it’s bad for their health.

A professor at the University of Maryland has pointed out the inevitable consequence: “If we overuse strollers, children are not going to be as physically active.”

Which is a mild and measured way of saying: “Folks, a lot of kids move from a supine position on the floor watching Barney videos into an upholstered Sherman tank from which they can watch designer handbags, when they should be using their little legs.”

Given that obesity in children is becoming an epidemic in the Western world, more attention is being devoted by paediatricians, not only to the food they’re taking in, but the time they spend sitting down. That time is increasing. Activity time is decreasing. Not because children choose to be inactive, but for the convenience of those who take care of them.

The manufacturers of the baby buggies have taken notice. In America, they’re making them bigger and stronger, so that they can safely carry children weighing three and four stone. They’re even advertising them in a way that helps create the idea that living in a buggy is normal beyond toddler-age. One stroller is now sold as “growing with your toddler from infancy to four years”.

Meanwhile, some local authorities in this country have become so worried about the health risks to children of a sedentary life that they’re introducing “the walking bus”.

In Donabate, North Co Dublin, a scheme was introduced which involved more than 70 post-toddlers who walked to the local primary school, some of them covering a mile and a quarter, each morning. They loaded their schoolbags onto an easily pulled trailer, wore brightly luminous jackets saying “Be Cool, Walk to School” and were supervised by a community garda.

In addition, several parents got enthusiastically involved. The kids sang their way to school and - despite initial predictions that this was a bright idea unlikely to survive the Irish weather, “the walking bus” as it became known, was a success.

That kind of initiative is environmentally-friendly, empowers the physicality of children and helps prevent passivity and obesity. But it’s not enough.

Halting the growth of the toddler buggy is just as important.

Getting toddlers out of oversized parent-serving padded Sherman tanks a year or two earlier should be a national objective.