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THERE was a time when your first set of wheels meant your first car, but today it means something completely different — and with so many variations on the market, buying your baby’s first pram has become something of a momentous occasion.

But according to author Jared Diamond, Western infants would develop into more confident, curious and secure children if they were carried close to their parents for most of the first year of their life.

In his latest book, The World Until Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who is a professor of geography at the University of California, argues that his observations of the traditional methods of carrying children in Africa and the Amazon have shown that babies who are carried in an upright, outward facing position are more “emotionally secure, self-confident, curious, and autonomous”.