Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
News
Original poster

Having your baby facing away from you in their buggy is not the done thing,

145 replies

wrinklytum · 21/11/2008 21:22

So says research from Dundee University.Apparently they are much better off in a buggy that faces the parent.

Sighs at self.Yet another parenting issue I have failed on.

OP posts:
Pinkyminkee · 21/11/2008 22:48

greenmonkies does it specify the age of the infants? sometimes it says children, sometimes babies.
The study doesn't suprise me really, these are some of the good reasons why some of us use slings regularly.

LittleWeePickle · 21/11/2008 22:52

If my DS is looking at my bloody sour face when we're going around in the buggy then isn't that a form of emotional abuse!!!!

What he doesn't see doesn't hurt him - onwards and forwards!!!!!

ShyBaby · 21/11/2008 22:53

Ds faced me in the McClaren.

Dd faced me in the combi thingy.

Ds..placid baby, ever smiling, moody boy now.
Dd..nightmare baby, cried constantly..rather affectionate now.

{shrugs}

GreenMonkies · 21/11/2008 23:01

LittleWeePickle forward it is then, or could you get some kind of facial surgery on the NHS perhaps??

ShyBaby, I think which way around thier buggy faces is just one thing that affects thier development!!

Pinky it doesn't specify the age, which is annoying really! And also they don't mention slings either, which is frustrating because thay are far better than any buggy.

pania · 21/11/2008 23:41

I really wanted a rear facing buggy but there wasn't one suitable for me at the time (I use public transport a lot and wanted one I could fold up easily with one hand and carry up and down stairs, and which reclined fully). When ds was a baby I used a sling a lot but I did always wish I could see him when he was in the buggy. Would prob have bought the Bugaboo Bee if it had been around then. We got a McLaren Techno in the end, which is great, apart from the seat facing the wrong way!

Maybe McLaren will finally produce a rear facing buggy now. I've read that they claim there's "no demand" for rear-facing buggies, which is just not true, IMO.

thumbwitch · 21/11/2008 23:45

surely this is more about whether you interact with your child in its buggy, whichever way it is facing?

I prefer to see DS, he is nearly a year old now and still faces me - when we were in Oz a few weeks ago, the stroller we were using could be used either way; DH preferred pushing it with DS facing fwd, but DS wasn't quite so keen! He was defo happier facing us. But probably because that is what he is used to!

nooka · 21/11/2008 23:58

I'm sorry, but 20 babies for a one mile stretch? Enough for a hypothesis, not enough for a conclusion. My two were in a BabyBjork sling when they were small. I don't think they could see me at all, and I suspect I ignored them more because I knew they were safe and sound. I did kiss their heads quite a bit though. When they were in a double buggy they interacted with each other quite a bit - is that bad do you think? And what about buggy boards? I really don't think that most babies spend enough time in a pram or push chair for it to have any significant impact. The move to having babies only in the back seats of cars will probably have much more of an impact (if the general premise is true, which seems quite possible to me).

Gingerbear · 21/11/2008 23:59

Simple - give them a rear vision mirror so they can see you, problem solved.

thumbwitch · 22/11/2008 00:03

Gingerbear - do you know where to get a rear vision mirror that isn't dependent on you having rear seat headrests? I couldn't find one..

GreenMonkies · 22/11/2008 21:27

Nooka, the over-all study group was 3000 babies, the 20 mentioned were just one part of the study.

GB, its not just about the baby being able to see you, it's about how much more mum and baby interact when they are facing eachother.

fifitot · 22/11/2008 21:34

GreenMonkies - agree with you. People should stop feeling so guilt ridden. It's a decent sized sample and makes alot of sense, especially in relation to babies.

TinkerBellesMum · 22/11/2008 21:49

I think it's more to do with them seeing you speaking than hearing you (this is old, I read it yonks ago). I disagree that it's aimed at parents with money, I'm living on disability money so made my own sling, it was free because I sold the other two for £20 (which was still cheaper than in the shops for my friends and I made a little bit on it).

There is an interesting article on babies facing out in slings and I should imagine some of the reasons are the same for both (obviously posture is only a problem in a sling).

I can never understand why people get so worked up about new studies. We didn't know "this" before and now we do. What's wrong with that? It's how we progress and why we are who we are today.

lalalonglegs · 22/11/2008 21:52

But being in a pushchair is a really minor part of most babies' life (and mine have tended to fall asleep in their forward-facing pushchair). Surely we should be talking to our children all the time, not just when we're rushing down to the shops? That is what infuriated me about this article - how about chatting to them around the house/in the car/at the playground? The woman seemed a complete fanatic. Madness.

cat64 · 22/11/2008 21:52

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

lalalonglegs · 22/11/2008 22:06

I think it does make a difference to single out pushchairs when they are such a minor part of most babies' waking hours. And the woman herself admitted that even if you felt it was an important issue, it wasn't a choice that could be acted on by many families because not everyone can afford a Bugaboo.

MilaMae · 22/11/2008 22:41

Absolute piffle.

All 3 of mine slept in their pushchair the minute their head touched the inside when tiny,they would have hated not being able to see the world around them when bigger and where actually hardly ever in a pushchair as I didn't tend to spend hours pounding the streets.

All 3 of mine were never stressed had extremely good speech at a young age and are doing fantastically well at pre-school/school. They are very happy lovely kids,clearly not been damaged by the horrors of a forward facing pram.

Isn't it time these so called experts actually spent their time studying something useful?

Lockets · 22/11/2008 22:44

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

thumbwitch · 22/11/2008 22:50

MilaMae, I don't think you can simply discount research as piffle on the basis of your sample of 3. That would be the same as drawing conclusions from research done on such a small sample number - silly.

MilaMae · 22/11/2008 22:59

Erm I'm not. I don't know anybody with a rear facing pushchair at all near me. None of us have stressed or developmentally damaged children.

I'm sorry but a piece of research that contains the following- "life in a buggy is emotionally impoverished and possibly stressful" is as I said before piffle. How many babies spend their whole lives in a buggy? With 3 under 18 months I was lucky if mine got to go in their pushchair at all!!!!

And to call a child in a forward facing pushchair emotionally impoverished is ludicrous A child that is emotionally impoverished is a child that is never cuddled or played with,most of us with forward facing pushchairs actually do spend a lot of time cuddling and playing with our babies.

misdee · 22/11/2008 23:00

my rearfacing stroller cost me £95.

Plonker · 22/11/2008 23:18

Personally speaking, I much preferred my babies/toddlers facing me in the pushchair. I interact much less with my toddler when she is in the forward facing buggy than when she is in the rearward facing pram.

I even find that i miss her on walks when she is forward facing. I'm strange ...i know ...

chipmonkey · 22/11/2008 23:20

Well, when there's another World War, I'm sure forward-facing buggies will be to blame. I get whatever buggy I can get cheap second-hand from someone on rollercoaster.ie because I have never yet had a perfect buggy and don't imagine I will find it by spending loads of cash!
Greenmonkies, I am fond of you and was obviously Doing It Wrong but all my boys hated slings and I couldn't tie them to save my life! I gave up on my Slingeasy when ds3 nearly fell out of it onto a tiled floor and gave up on the Hug-a-Bub after deciding that it was actually a scarf!

NCbirdy · 22/11/2008 23:22

Oh no, my dc are truly bu**ered, I didn't use a buggy at all - how on earth will they cope in later life?

Sometimes I wish they would spend their time amd money looking into things like Childhood Lukemia or Abuse within the home - you know things that really matter!

TinkerBellesMum · 22/11/2008 23:49

Maybe because that's not their specialty and people who's specialty it is are doing just that? Or should they retrain?

nooka · 23/11/2008 03:00

It's usually those who fund such studies then those who undertake them that decide what to look at. I don't think the conclusion that there is less interaction with a forward than a rear facing buggy is surprising, it's the conclusion that this is a major problem that irritates me. What about all the confounding factors which affect the relationship between parent and baby? Or the relatively short time babies spend in buggies? Perhaps this was funded by a maker of rear facing buggies?