Mummy facing buggies
I just read this article on the Guardian, which reports the preliminary results of study carried out by the National Literacy Trust inside the Talk to Your Baby campaign and funded by the Sutton Trust.
The Talk to Your Baby campaign aims to encourage parents to talk more to babies from 1 to 3 years old because it helps develop their social and communication skills which will contribute to their success in many aspects of their future life.
These researchers chose to study the life of babies inside a pushchair given that modern babies spend on average 2 hours a day in them. Early results, but the sample is not very large, seem to indicate that parents are (obviously) more likely to talk, laugh and interact when pushing a toward-facing pushchair. An even smaller-sample study seem to suggest that when babies are facing their carers they are more relaxed and their heart rate is lower.
Apparently stroller manufacturers are going to look into this and possibly produce less expensive mummy-facing pushchairs, as now those pushchairs that offer the possibility of switching the orientation of the baby belong to the upper end of the price range, like the Stokke Xplory, the Bugaboo strollers, the Loola and the like.
I agree that mums have other occasions to talk and interact with their babies, but maybe this is another thing to take into account when chosing a pram!
-Michela
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This seems quite natural, don’t you think? My son was born before the Bugaboo era. However for some reasons one of my obsessions whilst pregnant was to get a mummy facing buggy. I was living in Asia and there was no such buggy to be found there. I finally got one… that I imported from Europe and never regretted it. I do believe it was nice for him and it was indeed very nice for me. Everywhere I was going I was never alone, he would interact me as much as I would with him. Also if I stopped for a coffee, he would be at the right height and I could even feed him in this buggy without ruining my back! He was a very very happy baby, always keen to get into the buggy. I am not a scientist but I thought he found him more relax as well as he would see my face when talkting to other people (I noticed that my friends’ babies who were not facing their mums often got nervous when their mums talked to someone and they would not see their mums’ faces). When my daughter was born we were in London. I did the same buggy-wise but switched very quickly to the road facing McLaren because “driving” a buggy in London was not as simple as it was in Tokyo as surprising as it may sound… I can tell you that she was very frustrated and I had to be creative and invent strategies to get her in the buggy and then keep her entertained. She would regularly check on me as well… very cute!
I actually really like the concept of the Stokke pushchair – it’s not only mummy facing, but you can also change the height so it can be used as a high chair!!
I always got sad when my boys started to get antsy and we needed to switch the bugaboo to being outward facing so they could look at the world instead of their mama!
I suppose this is a really great thing about the Bugaboo… because you have the option!