To be up to here with older generation's attitude to car seats

I have a relative who never put her children in child seats after they were babies. She just used to shove them in the back seat. She called her SIL soft for strapping her sons in their seats.

I babysat for a neighbour when they had childcare problems, a 6 year old boy. I had to drive him to school and when I asked about a seat, dad said Oh we don't bother.

Why do some people play fast and loose with their children's safety?

This is true, my mum understood my need to read face as long as possible but I know people my age who buy any old seat and don’t even use it properly.

My stupid ex is only 40 ish and he is absolutely dreadful for not using appropriate car safety. I found out a while ago that he was seating my young DS on a cushion in the middle because he couldn't fit 3 car seats in the back of his car and couldn't afford a bigger car. Not my fault he had too many kids and definitely not DSs fault but it would have been DS that suffered. Plus he always drives too fast.

Never had any complaints about the grandparents use of appropriate car seats though. They always just used what they were told to use.

🙄

You are a tough mother in every sense of the phrase! You got this!

Is it an age thing? My parents and PIL were always scrupulous about using the car seats correctly and would never have put my children at risk. Not all the older generation are negligent or dismissive of safety.

Angst the other way here. I’m the grandmother waving the ERF banner, I kept my eldest DGS RF until he was 5. Both DDs switched to FF in their cars before the kids were 2.

Yes, I remind them of the legal requirements and undisputed safety statistics, falling on deaf ears.

Yes you do, because until its well and truly hammered in there it will keep happening.

My husband is like this 🤦🏼‍♀️

Why don’t you just not put your kids in their cars then?

Well unless you get 'older generation' edited to 'my parents', my monies on you being told at least another 50 more!

I don't know, don't think it's politics.
I intellectually can see the rationale but it just doesn't compute, it looks so wrong.

The only thing that I find odd is the much older kids rear facing when I can see that the seat isn't secured properly because the huge seat doesn't fit properly in a small car. Fitting your seat is so important both to the car and securing the straps to your child- that 5* Swedish safety test or whatever is pointless with it. From 2 years old, forward facing is better if that fits your car

Well, I'm going to call her ageist because she appears to raging against the entire 'older generation' from the title, but she's actually angry with maybe four people?

Try not to tar us all with the same brush, OP.

What older generation? They can't be that old if yours are still so young

I don’t have daughters, but if I were like your parents and in-laws (I’m not, I was careful with my kids and am even more so with my grandchildren), my daughters-in-law would have gently but obviously avoided giving me the opportunity to take their children anywhere, and my sons would have read me the riot act, both for endangering their kids and upsetting their wives.

Just get your husband on board, and take control of the situation together.

(And I’m joining the chorus of ‘you’re ageist’)

When my parents had us (late 70s) our car didn’t have rear seatbelts and we didn’t have car seats. We went from carrycot on the seat, to lap, to sitting by ourselves. And yes, sometimes in the boot!

now my dc are small, my dad (nearly 80) says he isn’t up to date with the latest research but that he’ll do whatever we tell or show him. He reflects on how crazy it was for us to have traveled how we did.

I don't know what to say. Maybe it's cultural differences.
I'm thinking of other countries - those with people with enough income to use the same equipment, but who don't currently. E.g. some people in say Russia.
I'm foreign though I've been here over 20 years, and having kids as old as 6-7 - (school age kids!) in car seats....

I absolutely hear you! Both my mum and my granda are a nightmare when it comes to car seats. ‘That’ll do,’ declared my Granda as he tried to simply put the seatbelt round my 3 week old’s seat. ‘It’s only a short journey, a cushion will do’ says my Mum quite regularly. Or, ‘We didn’t need these in my day and you all survived.’ Or my personal favourite: ‘No, we can’t go there because I don’t have enough car seats and your Mummy won’t let you go without one ‘ (this to my children about various day trips when visiting my mum). There was also the time my daughter told me where she’d been and when I asked how she’d got there without a car, she told me they did take the car, no there was no car seat, but Grandma had told her not to tell me. That has definitely not happened again since.

I look after my granddaughter once a week. I have a rear facing car seat which she is still in at 2.5 and will be until her parents say otherwise.

I didn't know anything about rear facing seats before she was born but I fully support my DD and SIL's choices and wouldn't dream of undermining them.

It's not a generation thing.

'the older generation'

I talk to my dc about how it was when I was a child (no seat belts) in front or back; how it was when we brought them home from hospital (in a loose carrycot strapped into the back seat) etc. But I tell the stories with a sense of shock at how careless we were.

As one of the 'older generation' I am obsessive about making sure my dgc are in age/size/weight appropriate car seats. Always.