According to this , some people are calling for the banning of ‘baby bath seats’. These are plastic rings attached with suction cups to the bottom of the tube, creating a kind of open ‘tube’ in which to sit ‘baby’. This is to offer some stability to slippery young ones who can squirm quite a bit during this process.
Unfortunately, some caregivers, while utilizing this product have forgotten the #1 rule of babies and water “never, ever, take your eyes off them, even for a second”, with the result of 77 infants drowing since 1983 ( a little over 4 per year). It is to be noted that, according to the link, of these 77, 74 occured when the caregiver left baby unattended. In two of the remaining 3 cases, the baby became stuck in the product and the adult couldn’t extract them (no description is available for the situation in the 3rd)
It is argued that the design of the product gives some caregivers a false sense of security about leaving their child alone in a tub of water.
Debate: Should this product be banned because some of it’s users apparently use it incorrectly, thus endangering the child?
My sense at this point is ‘no’. The device, as described seems like a wonderful aide to parents of squirmy slippery folks (like my son was), and would be of great benefit to avoid the slipping under the water squirmy slippery babies often do. That those who consider any product ‘fool proof’, haven’t met sufficiently talented fools. That while the drowning death of 77 infants is a terrible thing, that the fault (at least for 74 of them) resides with the careless caregiver, not the device.
This reminds me of what my former-EMT dad calls “water wings,” those inflatable doohickeys that little kids wear on their upper arms when they go swimming: “drowning toys.” Too many parents stick those dumb things on their kids and think they don’t have to watch them. Wrongo.
I’m also having a fleeting memory of “walkers” for small children being banned because too many of them were going down flights of stairs with unattended kids in them. True?
I’m with you, wring. If they banned everything that some moron could possibly find a way to misuse, then we’d all be sitting in the middle of a field. :rolleyes:
ahh, Scarlett, yes, the baby walkers. IIRC, though, there were two different issues with them. First the stairs thing (yea, let’s not worry about blocking off the stairs with a baby around :rolleyes: ) , but some of them had a nasty tendancy to suddenly collapse while the child was still in it. I’m not sure if it was a manufacturing error or error in usage tho.
Well, in the meantime, I’ll be out in the middle of this field with a palm frond over me (no use risking an umbrella ya know)
Well, of course we have a habit of legislation to protect us from our own stupidity. Much of this is for societal benefit–if Joe Biker mushes his head because he dumped at 65 and wasn’t wearing a helmet, we lose a potentially valuable member of our society (and have to absorb the costs of his care if he lives). Or if a few kids get killed because they were sitting unsecured in the bed of a pickup, same deal.
If we say that this instance is stupid and silly, we then must expect people to have a clue. Is that a reasonable expectation? I’m afraid it might not be.
::Fenris ponders the concept of a gun-control hijack with the obvious parallel::
<pondering>
::Fenris decides wring has been too cool and too good a friend to do something like that to her perfectly acceptable thread::
Fenris simply answers:
“No”::
::Fenris wonders why he’s writing in third person again. Is this a sign of the apokolypse, or just the fact that Fenris’s day was terrible, horrible no-good, very bad (pit thread may be forthcoming) ::
I’m inclined to say Ban the silly Objects. They are not all that useful and if they give Idiot Parents the idea that Baby is safe, then why risk it?
Although as I type this I can remember getting the email calling for banning and saying to myself Self, this is dumb and then learning there was actually more to it than user stupidity. ::wanders off to try to remember::
Baby walkers are a very bad thing. They give a false sense of security to the idiot parents among us. They also damage developing spines and interfere with learning to walk. I am heartily in favour of banning them (and the bath rings if I can just remember why).
I think I want one of these bath things. I live in China so we just make do with your basic baby bath tub, but they are sure slippery little devils.
Living outside the US maybe I’ve got a little bit of perspective on legislation to protect yourself. I believe it is one thing to legislate baby seats, but to legislate on 4 deaths per year (and virtually all of the documentation show it is the caregivers fault) is ludicrous. It is not even statistically meaningful. How many babies die per year while in the bathing process? How many babies drown in swimming pools every year? It’s got to be a lot more than 4.
Personally, I believe in picking your battles and focusing on a few key pieces of legislation that have a large impact. Sometimes I wonder what I will be inadvertantly guilty of on my next visit to the US, and for the first time with my daughter.
