Forwards or backwards?

Should baby face forward or back?

What direction does your child’s stroller face?

New research raises questions about stroller design and the role it may play in a child’s language development.
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M. Suzanne Zeedyk, a senior lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Dundee in Scotland, studied the way 2,700 families interact with their infants and toddlers while pushing them in strollers.
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She found that caregivers were less likely to speak to infants when the child was facing forward, compared with strollers where the baby faces the caregiver — what she calls a toward-facing journey.
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In a small controlled experiment, the researchers gave 20 mothers and infants ages 9 to 24 months a chance to use both types of strollers, and recorded their conversations.
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Mothers talked to their children twice as much during the 15-minute toward-facing journey, and they also laughed more.
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The babies laughed more, too.
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Of course, infants do not spend all their time in strollers, but anecdotal evidence suggests that babies can easily spend a couple of hours a day in them.
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And research tells us that children’s vocabulary development is governed almost entirely by the daily conversations parents have with them.
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When a stroller pusher can’t easily see the things that attract a baby’s attention, valuable opportunities for interaction can be missed.
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Ms. Zeedyk notes that forward-facing strollers are a relatively new development.
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In the 19th century, strollers were designed so that infants faced the person pushing them.
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But the development of convenient collapsible strollers changed that, because engineering constraints required the baby to face forward to look at the world, rather than a parent or caregiver.
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Ms. Zeedyk notes that her findings raise more questions than answers, but she hopes stroller manufacturers will work to develop a collapsible stroller that faces both ways.
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Meanwhile, the findings already encourage us to think again about how babies experience stroller rides — and other forms of transportation like car seats, shopping carts and slings.
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Parents needn’t feel worried, but instead curious about the elements of the environment that attract their children’s interest.
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The core message of our findings is simple
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Talk to your baby whenever you get the chance — and whichever direction your stroller faces.
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Tara Parker-Pope - The New York Times