For most people, the 2009 movie "Away We Go," has all but faded from memory, a wry little comedy that didn't gain much traction at the box office and was all but ignored during the past awards season.
But for some people one scene in that movie continues to echo at playgrounds, coffee shops and on city sidewalks. The characters Burt and Verona, played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, arrive at the home of a friend and mother of young children, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and proudly present her with something she does not own: a stroller.
The result is not the warm “Thank you” they expect.
“I love my babies,” she exhorts before banishing the stroller from her house and flying into a rage. “Why would I want to push them away from me?”
And that’s exactly the question some parents are asking themselves these days. For them, the last decade’s coveted Bugaboo or Maclaren stroller has been largely supplanted by baby carriers — chic wraps, minimalist pouches and soft structured packs.
Hardly new, wraps and other types of baby carriers are traditional in many parts of the world, and Western versions have been used in North America and Europe for decades. But lately, “wearing” one’s baby has taken on a certain cachet, with celebrities like Brad Pitt and Keri Russell pictured in star-gazing magazines and blogs with their babies strapped to their bodies.
In recent years, the number of carriers has expanded from a handful of styles to scores. “In 2004, there were barely any carriers,” said Bianca Fehn, an owner of Metro Minis. “You had to find these work-at-home moms who made them and go on a waiting list for weeks or even months to get a carrier.” Before opening the store, she started an Internet community called Slings in the City that held regular baby carrier demonstrations around town.
But as carriers have grown more popular, their safety has been questioned, with particular alarm about bag-style slings, which have contributed to the suffocation deaths of several infants. On Tuesday, Inez M. Tenenbaum, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, announced a forthcoming warning about slings, saying that “we know now the hazard scenarios for very small babies” carried in them. Many specialty stores, like Metro Minis, do not sell bag-style slings whose safety has been challenged, and instructs buyers to position babies in any sling upright and tight against the caregiver.
While most people using baby carriers extol the convenience of having their hands free to steer a toddler, dial a cellphone or maneuver through a grocery store, some see it as an integral part of their parenting philosophy, which holds that babies should be worn on the body to foster a strong attachment to their parents.
“Close physical contact is important for babies,” said Byron Egeland, a psychologist at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, who has studied and written extensively about infant attachment. “But I would quickly add that a parent using a stroller is not going to make or break whether their child is securely or anxiously attached.”
Claire Moore, 33, nuzzled her 7-week-old daughter, Zoë, while explaining that her carrier had been picked by her husband, Adrian. Walking their dog most mornings in nearby Prospect Park, he had spent months during her pregnancy trying to figure out the most practical, comfortable carrier for them both by surveying the park’s many fathers with babies tethered to their chests. Eventually, Ms. Moore said, he settled on the ERGObaby; they bought one in cranberry.
“He’d been keeping an eye out and knew that was the one,” she said. “All the dads are wearing it.”
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