Riding In Cars with Babies

Almost every parent has a similar memory: buckling their tiny newborn into a car seat, walking out of the hospital to the parked car, and carefully securing the car seat into its base in one of the back seats. Driving home with your baby – whether it was 10 minutes away or an hour – felt like the most nerve-wracking ride of your life.

I remember picking out the car seat that would carry our babies safely home. My husband and I did a bunch of research online, asked friends and family for recommendations, went to a speciality baby store to see the various makes and models in person, and watched a YouTube video to confirm we had, in fact, installed the rear-facing car seat correctly.

Following all these steps felt like an important rite of passage into parenthood. After all, if we weren’t taking our child’s car safety seriously, what else would we let slide?

Born to Drive – Or At Least Sit in the Front Seat

Times sure were different growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Of course, my parents brought me home from the hospital in an infant car seat, and they buckled that car seat into the back seat of their car. But that’s where the commonalities seem to end.

For one, it’s questionable whether my car seat even had a five-point harness, and it was padded with extra blankets and a ruffly pink skirt (to signal to other cars that I was a girl, of course). My car seat was about as unsafe as an ‘80s crib, which was filled with blankets, lined around the edges with a pillowy bumper, and a Fisher-Price Busy Box dangling off the side. Back then, "cushioning" a baby seemed more of a priority than preventing suffocation or, in the case of car safety, ensuring the seatbelt was snug, I suppose.

My mom also recalls moving my car seat up to the front passenger side when she was driving alone so that she could keep an eye on me and soothe me with one hand if I cried. I sat in a booster seat for a brief moment as a toddler, but then very quickly graduated to a regular adult seat belt by the time I was five – nevermind my height and weight at the time. I was also free to sit in the front passenger seat soon after that.

From Bad to Worse

When I compare my childhood experience to fellow Millennial friends, it doesn’t even sound that bad. I had friends carried in the arms of their parents while riding in cars as a baby. Another friend said she was placed in a “car seat” that had nothing more than a loose metal bar – similar to the type you’d find on swings at an amusement park – to keep her in her seat as soon as she could sit up independently (so around 6 months old).

Friends who grew up in rural areas had even less rules around car (or truck) safety as kids. They rolled around unbuckled in the back, holding on to other kids to keep from bouncing out their seats.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for stricter safety standards nowadays and higher quality car seats for my kids. But I certainly overthought just “how snug” was the right amount for my baby’s seatbelt, and when my son fell asleep in his car seat, I set a stopwatch for two hours and insisted on pulling over to give him a stretch.

I over-researched the moment we decided to change our toddler’s car seat from rear-facing to front-facing, and I can’t imagine letting our kids ride in the front-seat for a long time, not until they’re teenagers. Are we all a bit high-strung when it comes to taking our babies in cars? Maybe, but it’s for the greater – safer – good. Roads are busier than ever and (largely thanks to phones) drivers are more distracted. I’d rather be overly cautious and know that I’m keeping my kids as safe as possible every time they get into a car.