They still can die, and they still probably wouldn't

Every single time you take your child in a car, they are traveling at high speeds on hard pavement in metal and plastic canisters of flammable liquids. That is a fact. It is also a fact that if you thought about the thousands of ways a child could die in an auto accident every time you got in the car, you'd never leave the house and probably have the kid taken by the state due to your emotional and mental issues over it. When people say "I could be hit by a bus tomorrow" they really mean "I know logically that I am mortal", not that they fully accept the gravity of the truth that they could be hit by a bus tomorrow, but they could. Why do I say this? Because people need to stop believing, and I mean this literally, that rules will make them immortal.

I know parents who are just anal about the rules. Never put a baby in a car seat in a coat, stay rear-facing as long as possible (ever known a mother to fold her kid's legs together to keep the car seat rear-facing longer? I have), never allow a baby to sleep on their tummy (I've heard of moms who rolled babies over who flipped on their own during the night), never let a baby have a blanket in the crib (why do sleep sacks come in toddler sizes?), never give a baby under x months old anything over stage 2 baby food. And what does all this boil down to? A belief that if they follow all the rules and never deviate, nothing can happen to their babies. And if something bad happens to someone else's baby, that person must have done something wrong. The car seat straps weren't tight enough, or there wasn't a fan in the baby's bedroom, or they are a cheerio before they were old enough. Every baby death must be avoidable because if not, then how can I be absolutely sure to avoid my baby's death?

You can't. You can minimize risk but never avoid it altogether. Last fall a kid at a school here in town was struck by lightning. The fiery hand of fucking God hit this kid in the parking lot of the elementary school. This is the textbook definition of random! And I heard parents rant about how the school had no lightning rod, and the kid had a skateboard, and my favorite: school should not have let out if there was a storm. Because what I want is for the school to hold the kids hostage until the rain stops, which often takes hours. But this accident must have been preventable and avoidable, or else we have no power. And if we have no power, then we are powerless, adrift on an ocean with our kids, unable to control the waves or the tides or the currents. And that just scares the fuck out of everyone. And rather than live with that reality, they hide behind their rules. And we all do it, to an extent. We all try to minimize risks (as we should), and we all somehow convince ourselves that a car cannot drive through the wall of our house and run over our children while they sleep, that organic food can never make us sick, and sometimes even that if we make our kids dress conservatively, they cannot be raped. But it leads to some harsh behavior too. Parents treating other parents like monsters and murderers for fastening the car seat straps over the coat rather than inside it (read that link, it's really good), or for giving a baby a blanket, or letting a toddler have m&ms (choking hazard, you know). But the fact is that we are all blood bags waiting to be popped, and nobody is running around with needles, poking their kids.

For the record, my 12 year old gets to ride in the front seat, my sons wear coats in the car seats, my babies have blankets, Danny gums table food, I absolutely love the BundleMe in the winter (and it's a death trap the likes of which will surely kill my child, another good link), and I consider myself to be a pretty good mom. But then, I also let my daughter ride her bike to the store by herself, so I'm obviously the most passive-aggressive murderer ever.

I just need to get it off my chest

I'm a mutterer. When I used to work at a factory, bosses would shovel shit at me all day, and I'd take it. Yes sir, no sir, whatever you say sir. But I'd mutter into the machine about it later. I am real good at talking back to people who aren't there. And I am currently on a message board where everyone is so supportive of each other and we all get along, and it's great. But it means a lot of muttering, on my part, to keep up the niceties. So I'm going to do my muttering here, now, because I simply can't keep it in any more.

Safety is great. Safety for children is the most important factor I take into consideration every day. But, like everything else, it has to be mitigated against real world considerations. Some parents "err on the side of caution" to the point that they become paranoid and over protective. Being a parent is scary stuff, especially when you consider just how many ways there are for a terrible thing to happen to a kid, and how many terrible things there are. And for those parents, following "rules" to the letter often helps them feel as if they can prevent terrible things. But at what cost? I've known parents who went months without sleep because no matter how many people told them to swaddle the baby, the books said never to put anything in the crib, and swaddling involved a potentially deadly blanket.

Parents wait months and months to let a baby have a single lump in his baby food, or a blanket in his crib, or any toy small enough to fit through a toilet paper roll. (Newsflash: a garden hose will fit through a toilet paper roll, and a garden hose is not a choking hazard.) Parents who wash toys in bleach on a weekly basis, or who refuse to let a child sit in a shopping cart without a preposterous looking flouncy cover, or who won't let a toddler use a public bathroom without bringing a toilet seat from home. I am not kidding; people carry toilet seats with them.

My point is that some people have to follow every rule ever laid out by anyone, out of a mistaken belief that as long as they do everything right all the time, no harm can ever come to their children. And frankly, it annoys me a little. Because then when I don't follow a rule I am recklessly putting my child in danger and therefor I am a bad mother. Here are examples, muttering as I am, that drive me nuts.

Did you know that everyone under 4'9" needs to be in a booster seat whenever they are in a vehicle? Sounds logical, right? Well, this is everyone under 4'9" regardless of age. Also, regardless of why they are under 4'9". So every adult with dwarfism should be, for their own safety, driving from atop a booster seat. But here's the thing: dwarfs often have average sized torsos - you know, the part of the body that the booster seat actually elevates - and are only short because of short limbs. But they are under 4'9" so they must be in a booster seat, preferably in the back seat away from air bags! There is no room for interpretation. I can only assume that means that a formerly 6'5" double amputee would need a booster seat as well, since people tend to lose height without their legs. Welcome home, Soldier, and thank you for your service and sacrifice. Here is your Evenflo Big Kid Booster Seat!

Car seat safety is of the utmost importance. That is why, no matter the temperature, car seat straps are never to be fastened over a coat. It seems that a coat, any coat, that comes between the straps and the baby will compress in an accident and leave space for the baby to fly out. I have no doubt that this is true. But when it is 20 below I am less inclined to fear a head on collision and more inclined to fear hypothermia or frost bite brought on by me standing there taking the baby's coat off with the car door open. Although I have been told that it is okay to merely unzip the coat and fasten the straps against the child's chest that way. Except that I have recently learned that car seat covers and BundleMes are unsafe because they come between the back of the car seat and the baby. So how on Earth is the back of the coat safe to be behind the baby? And if a thin cotton cover is unsafe, then a onesie must be a death trap. And diapers! Diapers fit between the crotch strap and the baby. In fact, a diaper keeps the baby an unsafe distance from the center of the entire 5 point harness system. So it stands to reason that the only safe baby is a naked baby. In 20 below zero temperatures, in Snowpocalypse.

I'm sorry for all that ranting. It just bothers me when the same people who circumcise (over a hundred dead baby boys a year in the US alone just from complications of circumcision) and formula feed (how many babies die from diseases that breast feeding might have prevented or from tainted formula [or water]?) throw fits about car seat covers and buttoned up coats.

And the dwarfs! We must think of the dwarfs! The aren't tall enough to be allowed to touch upholstery!

My take on why so many Americans spoil their kids

I've read articles about this topic and I've agreed with a lot of what some of them say, but here's my take on it.

My grandmother's generation, raised in the Depression, had nothing. They were often hungry, wore old and oft-repaired clothing, and swore never to do that to their own kids. So the next generation, the baby boomers, were given everything they needed. They got new clothes and lots of food whenever they wanted (I think the invention of the snack, let alone specific snack foods, came at about this time), and luxuries like TV and record players.

Then the baby boomers had kids, my generation. And not only did they give us everything their parents gave them, but we also had cable and central air conditioning and other newly invented luxuries. Plus, divorce became popular in the 70s and 80s and our parents were busy having careers and getting divorced and remarried and doing all the dating in between. And they made up for their absence and preoccupation with gifts. Two families can mean two Christmases, and Mom working late or going out on a Friday night can mean pizza or fast food. So we got spoiled, and fat, as a generation. And now we have kids, and we add our own twist.

My generation, the people I know anyway, seem to fall into 2 main categories. The ones who see divorce as an inevitability (I once heard a woman in her 20s refer to a passing stranger as "my fourth husband", and those who swear never to do it themselves. Oddly enough, the ones who divorce most often tend to come from parents who never did. But the ones who are determined never to divorce often remember how parental divorce affected them or their friends growing up. They remember feelings of neglect and unimportance and don't want to do that to their children. And they remember parents who weren't home. I know more stay at home parents my age than I remember seeing when I was a kid. Our mothers were dating and flirting and finding us step-dads and we want to be there for our kids. And now you have , in addition to the cable TV and central air conditioning, cell phones and laptops. But also helicopter parents. Parents who remember what it felt like when they were bullied and Mom didn't care, so they will storm into the school and fight for their child over the smallest things. Parents who rush their kids to the doctor over any fever or rash or nausea. Parents who practically have Purell pumped into their house via water pipes. (I don't remember my mother ever sanitizing my toys in bleach growing up but now people talk about doing that all the time, and the moms I know who do it seem to be the ones complaining of sick kids the most. Causation or correlation?)

Somehow in the last 3 generations, we've gone from telling our kids to always dress nicely and be polite and respect your elders no matter who they are, to everyone only worrying about their own family and resenting any implication that there might be a greater good out there worth worrying about. It manifests in little ways all the time. A parent who refuses to vaccinate their kid because they think there are too many shots contributes to the diminishing of herd immunity. Germaphobe parents teach their kids specifically not to share. Kids are taught to mind their own business and later, witnesses to public crimes never come forward. There is less of a sense of responsibility to society than there used to be. There is also a growing sense of narcissism. An obese parent feeding their child high-fat high-sugar foods will say "I grew up on this stuff and I'm okay" and honestly believe it. A circumcised father, rather than looking at his perfect baby boy with pride, will demand an unnecessary surgery so that the boy's penis will look like his (which is, of course, the most glorious penis ever to exist). A mother who grew up with an absent and selfish mother will also devote her time to her own social and love lives and claim that, "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your children." The idea of parental sacrifice is either taken to extremes (Ever met that mother/martyr who refuses to let her husband help her with anything?) or ignored altogether under the guise of not becoming a martyr. Our mothers fought for the right to be mothers and career women, to have it all. And now a lot of women have to fight just to get it all done, and the children get spoiled, either by being given too much stuff or too much time. If your kid grows up learning that every slight, real or imagined, is worth Mom marching to the school to fight over, or that every sniffle is worth a trip to the doctor's office, they develop a sense of entitlement. They should never feel less than 100% and a doctor needs to fix it now. The school can't do anything less than beneficial for them and the policy and/or curriculum needs to be changed now. This translates later to the fry cook who demands more respect at work even though he has the lowliest and least respected job in the place. He's not going to work his way up to a job that gets more respect; he's just going to demand more respect and a cost of living raise where he is. I once heard a fry cook, after two weeks on the job, complain when he got fired for excessive absences: "I thought this was supposed to be a company that cared about its employees and here they are firing me for being sick."

Our kids (collectively as a generation) and we, to a similar extent, are spoiled and fat and I think the two are very closely related. Our grandparents ate turnips and could make one chicken last 3 meals. I'm not suggesting we return to that, but daily cookies and soda, and portions as large as our plates are completely unnecessary. As is demanding respect and concessions from everybody at every turn. I heard a great quote once. It said "You are special and unique, just like everyone else."