My calendar tells me that my wife and I will welcome our first child into the world any day now. Yikes.
(This is good news for readers too: I’ll be doing less blogging this month.)
A couple of weeks ago, we toured our hospital’s birthing center where we learned that newborns aren’t allowed to leave without a car seat. That’s just commonsense. No argument from me.
And yet I found the car seat policy jarring. It suddenly registered: for my infant’s first foray into the outside world, he will be encased in a protective polymer shell so that it’s legal for us to travel with him at high speeds across the city in 2,000 pounds of metal.
Is it just me, or is there something weird about that?
I mean, it’s not the policy that’s the issue, but what the policy reveals about modern life. It illuminates the basic and largely correct assumption that the only way to leave the hospital is in a car. The policy is a reminder that cars so completely dominate our cities that they are literally with us from our the first hours of our lives. (And at the risk of sounding grotesque, there’s a fair chance that they will be with us in our final hours too. Car crashes are the leading cause of death under the age of 45.)
Maybe the reason I was startled is because my wife and I don’t define our lives around cars. Or at least we don’t think we do. Sure, we own a car, but we take it as a point of pride that it’s mostly a luxury rather than a necessity. Maybe we’re kidding ourselves.
Even here, in America’s sixth most walkable city, the car defines us. And even traveling between two urban neighborhoods—numbers 12 and 13 on the Walkscore ranking—we’ll be driving home from the hospital.
I suppose we might have avoided driving by arranging for a home birth. (One reason we decided not was that our small city house would mean too-tight quarters.) Or we might have found a birthing center in our neighborhood. (Though it’s unlikely it would be close enough for carless transport.) Regardless, our situation is hardly unusual. The vast majority of babies are born in hospitals. And that means car seats—and driving—from the beginning of life.
Granted, cars are exceptionally convenient for certain kinds of trips. Taking a newborn home from the hospital is perhaps not the best time for bus transfers or urban hiking. So, again, it’s not the hospital’s car seat policy I object to, so much as what it suggests: that in modern life, responsible parenting starts with a car.
I certainly don’t believe that’s true. But I guess I’ll be finding out any day now.
Alyse
Congratulations, Eric! I also had a baby in a Seattle hospital. I remember thinking the policy does seem a little “un-urban.” While we had a car at the hospital, we sold our car shortly thereafter. There are definitely other challenges ahead for you! I always enjoyed the juggling act required when you try to board a bus—folding the stroller, holding the baby, diaper bag, and everything else. When living in Copenhagen, I enjoyed their bus system—a portion of the bus is dedicated to parents with baby strollers! No folding necessary.
joshuadf
Well, soon to be congratulations! I also found this policy necessary but sad, especially since we do live within walking distance of the hospital where our first child was born. (Non-post-partum walking distance, that is.) The good news is that we’ve decided that, after recovery, responsible parenting starts by getting out of the car because newborns hate being in a carseat. They want to be held. Thank goodness for walkable neighborhoods and baby carriers.
Stacey W-H
Congratulations Eric! I heard of a friend of a friend who rode her bike to the hospital to deliver her baby—but of course, she didn’t ride home! Who would? If I had to pick one occasion for driving that was not negotiable for me, it would be coming home from the hospital after giving birth. I’d go to the hospital in a dog-sled, scooter, or kayak – but the trip home needs to be a car. Those dozen or so poorly-located stitches and the post-labor soreness make it almost impossible to travel any other way to get straight home, fast. Cars were made for moments like these. If only we saved our trips for such important times!I’ll be interested to hear if your driving habits change over the next few years. We were able to limit our driving the first few years because we had a nanny. Sometimes she took the bus and sometimes she drove. Now, I could walk to work—but I have to drive to preschool. I used to be able to carry groceries on foot, but we eat more and I can’t carry groceries plus a baby on foot. And years later, there is soccer practice, cello lessons etc. While they might be located close enough to walk (cello cases have built in backpacks!) there isn’t enough time to get to these events on foot. One could choose to ‘deprive’ our kids of these activities and live a slower-paced lifestyle, but parents are not good at depriving their kids. Due to this, I’m pretty sure parents aren’t going to be the leaders of the slow movement. Car culture is bigger than the way our communities have physically developed. Our expectations about how much we get done in a given day—our sense of productiveness – are connected to cars. Keep us posted on the new baby! Best wishes!
Mike
How does this work if you are taking a cab home? Do you just install the carseat in the cab?
VFuego
Homebirth is the perfect solution to this dilemma. No need to put a laboring mama into a car and no need for a carseat! Then when mom and baby are both ready to venture out in the world you can put babe in a sling and off you go by foot or bus!
Betsy
“One could choose to ‘deprive’ our kids of these activities and live a slower-paced lifestyle, but parents are not good at depriving their kids. Due to this, I’m pretty sure parents aren’t going to be the leaders of the slow movement.” Posted by Stacey W-H I have to respectfully disagree with this. As parents of a 5-year-old, we are embracing a slow lifestyle and seeing enormous benefits for our child. We limit activities significantly to a small number of things within a small radius of our home or childcare, bike or bus commute and plan to live within walking distance of whatever K we choose next year. And our child is not suffering one bit! In fact, he is a very well rounded child, well ahead of his peers academically and happy and secure. Not deprived in the least! 🙂 He has the time and energy to explore his interests at home and throughout the city, the time to think deeply about the world around him and time with his parents which is worth more than all of the outside activities in the world, especially at his age.We live this way so that we can look our child in the eyes and tell him we’re doing everything we can to ensure he has a world to grow up in. If parents look at these things as depriving their children instead of helping to build a more sustainable future, then it’s definitely hard. I find it helps to imagine the deprivation kids will be facing if we don’t change our ways. Imagine not enough water or food, kids unable to play outside because of the dirty air, etc. I will add that we’ve been lucky enough to be able to make the choices we’ve made, to have flexible jobs, live where we live, etc. I know that not everyone has that kind of flexibility, which can make it significantly more difficult. And I imagine it gets harder as they get older, but I think everyone could make choices to simplify their lives and minimize their impact, if only they would make up their minds to do so.
J-net
I didn’t realize the carseat was a requirement. I live within walking distance of a birthing center and just assumed I’d be able to walk home when we have a child. We have been wrestling with this issue of children and cars, however. We hope to start a family within a couple of years and are trying to decide if we should buy a car. I get everywhere I need to on foot, bike and bus, but with a baby, I wonder if this is realistic. I also live in Minneapolis, where the temperatures aren’t quite as moderate as the lovely PNW. I am priviledged to even have this dilemma; I also ride the bus with many folks who don’t have incomes to support the purchase and maintenance of a car. The car seat requirement assumes not only that a car is available but also affordable.
Jennifer
Eric – CONGRATULATIONS! My husband and I just welcomed our firstborn child into the world last Saturday morning at dawn. We did have the carseat in the car, drove to the hospital in the wee hours to be assessed, and drove home an hour later so I could more comfortably labor at home. Which was more comfortable than in the hospital for sure. The joy was that labor worked QUICKLY and about 3 hours after we left the hospital, there was NO WAY IN HE__ that anyone was going to be able to get me into any kind of vehicle – and the midwives arrived in enough time to calm me and birth our baby at home. Perfectly. Not a single complication. And I didn’t have to get in a car (nor did my daughter) until I went to see my chiropractor on her 5th day. FYI, midwives in BC come to the house, even if you choose to birth at the hospital, and they do postpartum visits at the house too. Makes it MUCH more restful for the sore mama! Good luck and be in awe at the incredible power of your wife! It is the most amazing thing ever.
Bus Chick
Congratulations, Eric! Oh, are you in for a ride! (Pun intended.) I also found the car seat policy to be depressing (though, of course, necessary). Even though we’re car free (and I took the bus to the hospital to deliver her), we assumed we’d take our newborn daughter home in a car. When the time came, though, it just didn’t feel right. It’s not the way we live, and we didn’t want it to be our first experience with our daughter. We did put her in a car seat as required, but we took the bus home. Since then (she’s 15 months now), she’s traveled in one form of carrier or another, and she loves being close. She also loves the bus. We spend the majority of our rides reading.Keep us posted on your experiences!
Jesse AKA The Rev
I really don’t mean to be a dick but…a kid? I thought you were going green?
Hal
Jesse, thank you for bringing this up. I have been wondering the same aloud among my close and wonderful “green’ friends who choose to compartmentalize their sustainability awareness from their biological drive. And have become a pariah.Eric and others: Much as I would love to express affirmation and joy in your wonder and sense of fulfillment and purpose; I too must express that you have only increased my cynicism about our chances to share peacably this limited planet. For 50 years I have been conscious of our compromising of green principles to human entitlement and expectations. But it is your choice, and I have faith that you and I will make the best of it. But that is little hope when we demonstrate we feel we can ignore the unsustainability of each additional human.
Holly
I will second Betsy’s comment. Our daughter is six months old. She is adopted, and we did not bring her home until she was three weeks old, so didn’t have to figure out how to get her home from the hospital. We had deliberated about it a lot however, since we might have had to, and we are car-free. In the event, she came to us from another city, and we ended up driving in a borrowed car to get her and bring her home. But her first trip once home was in our Danish trike—though still in a car-seat, secured with the seatbelt in the front box. All of her trips to the pediatrician have been in the trike. The car seat thing *is* incredibly revealing. It’s an illustration of the physical dominance of cars, but also their cultural dominance. Even people who don’t drive them are forced into their rules. Why couldn’t people get home from the hospital in an ambulance? The societal costs of a trip home for every new mother would be much lower than the costs of everyone having one or two cars. Emergencies are the thing most people bring up to castigate my husband and I with, when they hear we are car-free. “What will you do in the middle of the night when you have to bring your daughter to the hospital?” They ask, shocked at our dangerous negligence (an excellent example of the bizarre fear-mongering people do to new parents). SHould we need to take our beloved daughter to the hospital (which is 2 miles away), we will do what so many many people who don’t drive do: use one of the many other forms of transportation available, based on the level of emergency. An ambulance; a cab; a bus; our bikes. We can live without cars, but as Betsy notes, it requires different choices. In our experience, they are choices that make our lives richer; our world more intimate; our children safer; and give us a little more hope for the future.
patrick
I must admit, the banality of this particular blog post makes it hard to actually address directly. Let’s not, for a second, pretend that car seats and cars are the primary drivers of pollution, sprawl, globilization or any of the other issues we pretend to care about and want to address. Having children, i.e. fresh consumers, is a primary driver of all these problems.We want to have our proverbial cake (a sustainable lifestyle) and eat it too (have kids). When will we admit that these two lifestyle choices, as are currently practiced, cannot both be enjoyed.
Jeffrey Belt
Congratulations Eric!Our first boy was born near Seattle. I drove my wife to the hospital, and drove the expanded family home. My wife needed a car to commute so we had one, even though our boy spent much of his next four years riding Metro and Sound Transit, the trailer or rack seat of my bicycle, and walking (or running) to daycare, friends, school.I was also surprised by the hospital policy, and even more so when a friend gave birth to a premature baby. From her description, the hospital ran about an hour of tests of the tiny baby rigged with electrodes, in the car seat, to make sure he could be driven home safely.Our second boy was born near Zurich. My wife took a taxi to the hospital (while I walked to a friend’s to drop off our first) and we all walked home pushing the stroller. The hospital did not care how we took the baby home. He rode trains and trams and buses for almost two months before his first car ride.I find car seats an unfortunately excellent device into forcing us to drive more. Traveling with a young child in a car, even part of the way, means you also need to travel with the car seat, which is often bigger and not self-propelled. It’s a major hassle to lug around unless you’re in a car all the way (as opposed to, say, riding a train and renting the car at the destination). Also, because of the car seats, you can’t pile kids in the back seat anymore. The family car often has to grow as the family grows, and two families’ worth of kids driving somewhere almost always requires two cars.It makes the car more of an all-or-nothing choice. If most people you frequent have one, then you need to be very comfortable in your choice of not having one to resist.The good news is that the seats get smaller as the child gets bigger. Our first only needs a booster now and he carries it. If we’re strategic enough for the next couple of years with our second’s big baby seat, we can probably avoid buying a car forever, and keep enjoying rental cars the few times we need one.
MVP
Congratulations, Eric!I firmly believe that the world becomes a better place with great parents, like you and your wife will be! A loving family = a more compassionate society = a healthier planet for all creatures great and small.And car seats probably get that parental compassion flowing, right from the start!Wishing you a safe and enjoyable journey.With peace and love,Michelle
Erin
First hand experience says you can escape the carseat rule—at least in as small town Alaska hospital. I gave birth yesterday, and in so doing became the first person at this little hospital to both walk to the hospital in labor, and walk back from the hospital with my newborn. 🙂
Jeremy
First of all, congrats! Children will change your life in ways you cannot put into words.Second, I totally felt the same way that you did when our first child was born. My wife and I live in inner Portland, and we chose our house based on walkability and public transit. However, our hospital choices were limited to the suburbs – so driving was a must.That drive home from the hospital really freaked me out. It was strange that this new little person would first experience life outside the hospital (and womb) in a car – especially since driving a car is not central to our lives. It would be interesting to know what this whole process is like in a less car-dependent society (ie Denmark or the Netherlands). Anyway, thanks for the thoughts and enjoy your little one!
Evan
Okay, I may come under fire for this comment, but I would like to put it out there.This is for all who consider children merely “fresh consumers.” While I feel that population and consumption do need to be controlled in order to preserve this planet, the cynicism about human life expressed by some of you is shocking. It makes me feel that you don’t value the human experience of this planet at all. If that’s the case, let’s just annihilate ourselves right now and get it over with. Since that sounds ludicrous to most sentient beings, lets instead stop trying to control one another’s lifestyles. What is important is for each of us to value/love one another and this planet. When more of us begin to do this, we can create a truly sustainable society.
Matt the Engineer
Congrats Eric. It must be baby season – I missed this post because I was busy taking care of my new son.The baby seat is an interesting extra cost of a car that I hadn’t thought about. The things aren’t cheap, and you need a new one every few years.One thing I’ve noticed is that Seattle hospitals are actually pretty well served by buses. I’ve taken the bus home from Group Health after meeting my wife for a pre-natal appointment, and it was frequent and fast. That being said, the bus was the furthest thing from my mind when getting my wife to/from the hospital.Weighing in on the sustainability of children: my opinion is that <= 2 kids is a responsible choice for our world. Like being a vegan, purely adopting children or not having any at all is the most ethical way to go, but beyond what is required for doing your share. [Evan] “While I feel that population and consumption do need to be controlled in order to preserve this planet” By controlling population do you mean controlling how many children other people have? “lets instead stop trying to control one another’s lifestyles” Ok, I guess not. How do you control population without controlling peoples’s lifestyles? I’ve known a Chinese woman that would do about anything to get around the one child rule if she could.
Erin
My son took his first car ride at 5 days old yesterday. (He was transported by walking before that). And I quickly found out that while he absolutely loves being worn in a baby-wrap/sling for walking trips, he detests sitting alone in the back of the car in that uncomfortable car seat! Strangely, having a newborn has made me less inclined to take the car somewhere, knowing that I have to deal with that car seat and how much he hates it. I’d rather walk! (bus would work too, but there are none where I live).On the population end… I think we should be mindful of our decision to have children (and how many) as one that has a profound impact on our footprint. That said, a world where no one feels it’s ethical to bring new life into the world is a place sadly lacking in joy and hope! Personally, I wouldn’t ever have more than 2 kids, but I think attacking people over the things most precious to them (children) is a terrible way to win people over to the environmentalists point of view.