http://www.care2.com/greenliving/total-recall-why-child-safety-is-an-illusive-proposition.html
Total Recall: Why Child Safety is an Illusive Proposition
As if the Sigg Bottle recall of summer 09 wasn’t enough of a chart topper (personal note: I just received my “truly” BPA-free replacement bottles in the mail this week) we, as healthily panicked parents, have the great Winter 09 Maclaren Stroller recall to add to our year-end calendar events. For those of you that have no clue as to what I am talking about (seeing as this is hot news as of yesterday), the UK stroller giant Maclaren, who holds a sizable influence on the US stroller market, has issued a voluntary safety recall of all of their strollers manufactured from 1999 until 2009 (that is about a million strollers, if anyone is counting). That is a whole decade of strollers, and presumably few reported incidents. The reason behind this recall (as was confirmed yesterday by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission or CPSC) is that there have been about a dozen cases of inadvertent amputations of little (and I assume possibly some adult) fingertips in the folding mechanism of the stroller. Hardly a family friendly mode of transport.
Understandably parents are freaking out, and the Internet is a buzz with both rumors and genuine concern over these supposed guillotine strollers. Both Maclaren, as well as the CPSC are being flooded with calls and Internet traffic from concerned parents (could this new panic knock the H1N1 fear from its current top billing?) Maclaren, who again issued the recall, is not, as many would assume, taking all of the strollers back and refunding millions of dollars worth of strollers. Instead, as a remedy of sorts, they are offering free hinge covers to cover the offending hinge and “better protect children” (as every parent knows, children are incapable of removing any manner of cover or safety device, even when crazed with curiosity).
Not to be totally smug, I too am a Maclaren owner and spent the better part of the midnight hour trying to figure out how my trusty stroller could possibly turn against my child and me. I think I may have figured it out without doing bodily harm. Needless to say, as much as I could perceive the documented danger of the device, I don’t think it will stop me from continuing to use it. That said, I did send away for my complementary “hinge cover” from Maclaren.
This new upset, combined with the aforementioned Sigg bottle panic, and all of the other child product panics that have preceded this one (lead paint on toys, PVC, take your pick) fosters a collective environment of severe disease and insecurity. Parents are likely more aware and vigilant than ever before when it comes to how we clothe, feed, and provide for our children. But still, we are brusquely reminded that intentions and vigilance are simply not enough. We sit and wonder if the lining on that can of soup is slowly killing our children and/or making them stupid. We fret about the toxicity of face paints and hand soap. And we suspiciously eye all of the off-gassing plastic toys quietly, and invisibly, wreaking potential havoc on our indoor air quality.
Is the concept of safety utterly illusive and erroneous? Are we, as concerned parents, actually misleading (albeit unwittingly) our children into thinking that anyone could ever be truly safe? Do we owe it to them, and ourselves, to remain unwaveringly watchful and on guard when it comes to what and how we consume? Is the world out to get us? Has anyone found a healthy balance in all of this concern?
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9 comments
add your comment »kids are cleverer than you think,if it dont look right they wont do il.simple
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why is this inappropriate?
Childhood is a tough time for parents (and in my case, older parental brothers), because kids start out with speed, random movements, and an agonizing lack of common sense the minute they figure out how to move around the room.
It is very difficult to maintain the level of focus and attention to hazards that a child can get into, and children can get into trouble even if you just do a bathroom break.
Add the problem of world trade which has provided the public with a variety of potentially toxic baby products created by crazy greedy corner cutting corporate scumbags, and you have the recipe for disaster.
Some overseas products are obviously dangerous, like those toys with tiny magnets or small parts that are a choking hazard, and others, like plastic toys and bottles can pose a toxic threat that is not immediately obvious.
It would be nice to see some Chinese CEO types doing the dangle dance from a hangman's noose, for selling toxic plastic for child toys and baby bottles, but I will not be holding my breath.
I think the only way to avoid this issue, is to buy local whenever possible, and at the very least, find non-plastic alternatives to the drinking containers and sippy cups that children use.
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I think this generation of parents - myself included in this category - are the most anxious in recent history. We are bombarded with books, articles, and news stories documenting all the ways a lack of parental hypervigilence could lead to untold harm to our children. So we raise our kids in rooms where every corner is padded, every door has a gate, every drawer has a latch.
I'm not against safety - my home has all its outlets covered and so forth - but I think we've gone so overboard that in the end, our kids are going to be among the least resilient, least able to recover from injury (psychological or physical) that we've maybe ever had.
Our job as parents, in my opinion, isn't to make sure our children never have anything negative happen to them. It's to protect them when we can, focus most of our energy on protecting them from the truly awful, take action when we get new information on things we can control, but also recognize that we're training future adults, and with that, they need to learn that bad things can and will happen, even when we're being good people and good parents.
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why is this inappropriate?
Warnings given openly when problems are discovered are appropriate and important.
That said....my 93 y/o mother reminds me of when she was a preschooler and watched as a milk wagon horse bit off the finger of another child feeding it a carrot. The milk wagon horse continued to deliver the milk.
Each generation comes with it's own perils.
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why is this inappropriate?
Sure life is inherently unsafe. Sometimes it isn't the item as much as the way it is used. I read, about the Maclaren recall, that there were 15 instances of fingers being caught, 13 of which resulted in a type of amputation (scary word,) all incidence occurred while the strollers were being opened or closed. All are horrible experience for parent and child alike but it begs more detail. A hinge is a convenience but it comes with a cost. I don't have a Maclaren but I am considering one for my impending third. In ten years and millions of strollers sold, 15 incidents? I wonder how many times haste, cell phones or just the mega-distractions of parenthood were involved. Anyone ever raise a child without ever having them get hurt? Paper cuts? Stairs? Fall off a bed or couch?
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Life is inherently unsafe. However, a return to simpler things: don't buy canned foods or baby foods vacuum packed in plastic, can improve health for everyone in the family. The chemical count in our life is perhaps the most alarming thing today. Cooking from scratch with fresh or frozen ingredients is a lost art that needs recovered.
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Does your headline mean that child web safety is an illusion or did it mean that child web safety is difficult to achieve (elusive)? The article seems to be saying that it is possible, just difficult (elusive).
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why is this inappropriate?
Let think logically for a moment and realize that more fingers get slammed in car doors, caught in front doors, and smashed in cabinets than were ever damaged in a baby stroller (12 cases out of millions upon millions of stroller folds).
Let us admit that we understand how mechanical objects function in our every day life and that small fingers must be kept out of moving parts.
Kudos to Maclaren for offering the protection kits to anyone who asks. They are not the only company that produces this folding umbrella style stroller, but are the only ones doing anything about this potential hazard.
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why is this inappropriate?
do you mean "elusive?"
I think it's impossible, and a bit ridiculous to try. Most of us survived childhood in spite of strollers, stairs, swimming pools, and a lack of bike helmets. It's true that life is terrible for a parent who loses a child to something stupid, but that doesn't mean it makes sense for everyone else to freak out.
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