Car Seats: A Love–Hate Story of Safety, Parenting, and Time
It’s not uncommon to get the call, from a friend, a relative, a neighbor in need. “Do you, by any chance, have a car seat we can borrow?” Their adult-age kids are flying into town, and they’re bringing children with them. And when they get here, they’ll need to secure said kid or kids in the back of a car, in specially engineered containment units.
“Yes, we have one.”
“Can I come and get it?”
“It’s heavy.”
“Of course.”
“Really heavy.”
“Do you still have the directions?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I’ll have to.”
Our daughter has two boys, three years apart, the oldest 11 years old. They’ve gone through half a dozen car seats, many different models, all of them maddening in their own special way. Car seats elicit love-hate feelings. Mostly the latter.
When I was a kid, you sat all over the place in the car. There were no seat belts. You moved around. Back seat, front seat, even the floor was an option. In a big sedan it wasn’t uncommon to see a child lying above the rear seat, on the platform beneath the rear window. I’m sure the driver would not have put a potted plant back there, because in a sudden stop it might tip over, fly off, and break. But Junior? Sure, get comfy up there, son. Of course there was no data back then. When our kids came along, pediatricians and hospitals had begun advocating “child restraint.” Tennessee (of all places) passed the first child restraint law in 1978. Today, according to the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, 61 percent of children under age 4 who were killed in Michigan crashes (2017-2021) weren’t in proper restraints.
The handwriting is on the wall, written in blood. Car seats matter. Authorities say that “up to 82 percent of child car seats are installed incorrectly.” A loose child is at risk. “Movement,” studies show, “equals injury.”
So we do our duty.
I can still picture my daughter’s first car seat. This would have been in the early 80’s. It was a sturdy tan molded plastic bucket with a thin brown vinyl cushion. The lap belt crossed over the seat above the child’s waist and fitted through two slots on each side of the seat. Click. That was it. No shoulder straps on the car seat, no latches. Just the seat belt. The seat, and child, faced the rear of the car. When she was two years old, some summer mornings I would drive 30 minutes out to a local park, where we would swim in a small lake and eat a hot dog for lunch, then dump her back in the car seat, the vinyl cushion now heated to griddle temperature, cooled by a damp beach towel. A few minutes down the road, she was asleep. Thirty minutes later, the extraction of the sleeping child, to be carried inside the house and transferred to her bed, was relatively easy.
Those were the good old days.
Today’s seats ask more of you. There are anchors and buckles and tethers and straps. Installation is a challenge. After her first child was born our daughter loaded a new car seat in the back of her car (sans child) and drove over to the fire department. That was a young mother’s act of desperation. They installed the seat for her. Today you can go online and seek Car Seat Lady’s help, LATCH 101, the text-and-illustrations version. (LATCH stands for Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children.) You can also take Car Seat Lady’s Youtube course, Introduction to LATCH, which consists of six videos. If you’re a young parent, you might consider the free subscription to Car Seat Lady, because one seat will not be enough. Kids grow, the technology improves. That old seat your one-year-old sat in four years ago is no longer considered safe for your new one-year-old.
Along with installing the car seat, getting the child in and out of it can be back-wrenching work. No child wants to be in one of those things. Few children cooperate. Over the years I developed a technique. Call it “the toss.” Hold the child, one hand under her back, the other under her legs, lean through the open car door and gently toss her in her seat. She’ll get there. Then it’s stay, baby, stay! Often you must overpower the writhing child, slipping the strap over the first arm, then the other strap over the second arm, then back to the first arm again. Between her legs, she’s always sitting on that central fastening latch, please heist, baby, lift so I can … just barely, without hurting you, and without completely losing my cool … lock you down. The chest clip, check. Now tighten the straps so baby is immobilized. If you’ve done your job, if you take the seat out of the car, turn it upside down and shake it, baby will not fall out, baby will barely jiggle. Remember: movement equals injury.
Repeat the above operation every day for 8-12 years, in all kinds of weather, with baby dressed in her onesie or stuffed in her snowsuit, in a series of seats. Do this and you will develop an attitude about car seats. Frustration seasoned with gratitude. Frustitude.
In a few weeks we’re going to visit grandchildren in California: girl, two years old; girl, six months old. The days we drive them to daycare, after our son or daughter-in-law provides a ten-minute orientation, we’ll load them into state of the art car seats. You have to admire the technology, the design ingenuity that both guarantees safety and makes the driver’s job slightly less onerous. The big seat is mounted on a swivel. Unlock the seat and rotate it 90 degrees, and gently lay the child on it. No need for the toss. Secure the child and reverse rotate the seat, listening for the click. Click = lock. Next to the two-year-old, the baby rides in a device that, with the push of a button and gentle yank on a handle, transforms from a car seat into a stroller and back again. It’s both impressive and, to the grandparent, intimidating. In both cases, you do double duty–mastering the seat and managing the child.
The children reach an age, they seat themselves. They know the drill. The safety regimen is automatic. At some point, they begin to face forward. Safety experts recommend children sit in car seats until age 8-12.
If you got with the program, in the basement or the attic you may have seats for the newborn, infant, toddler, 1-year old, 2-year old, 3-year old, and so on. When you get the call, do you have a car seat? you can say, yes, please come and get it.
Please, do the right thing for your child. And then please, get this thing out of here.