Parents Revolt Over Fisher-Price Infant Seat With Face-Level iPad Mount
digitaltrends.com
digitaltrends.com
Let me guess. Two-parent household with enough money for regular day care, right?
I know a single mother who spends literally every single waking moment with her baby, not a moment to herself, and it's destroying her sanity. She needs electronic baby distracters just to get enough downtime to remain fit to care for her child. Fuck these sanctimonious pricks who think poor people don't count.
It doesn't have to be a single person or it's progenitors, but it does need to be someone who genuinely cares for the baby. When I was younger I remember my mother and father would often watch babies for other young mothers who needed time to relax. This seems like a good model, but our culture's irrational distrust of men invalidates half the pool of helpers and our growing disconnection from neighbors and other people jeopardizes the rest.
I wonder how many commenters here have children? A screen with moving images and sounds is absolutely hypnotic to a small child, and they will get stuck in front of it and sit staring for hours. When it is turned off, they will incessantly beg for it to be turned on, to the detriment of all other activities.
I also don't see how the only options are "spend all your waking hours focused solely on your baby" or "abandon them to be raised by an electronics firm." Sounds like your friend just needs some "work life balance."
I understand your friend's unenviable position. We (two-parent household) had three children within 4 years. We were just getting the first out of diapers when the last came along. We are intimately aware of how exhausting, stressful, and mind-melting the constant need of little ones can be. I imagine it is as difficult or worse for your friend doing it on her own.
Unfortunately that does not change the fact that we are social beings, and we learn through play and interaction with others (particularly our parents). Combine that with research that suggests that the first months of life establish a framework for how our brain will develop for the rest of our life and you can understand the concern about a carrier like this which seems to be entirely opposite what research has shown to be good for infants. Generally I dismiss "think of the children!" arguments without consideration, but in this case I think it is justified. What is our role as parents if not to nurture our children? We can not ignore the research because it is difficult for our situation.
Now, having said all of that, here is my problem with the so-called "revolt" mentioned in the article:
1. From the article:
However, it’s important to note that the seat can be used normally without an iPad.
2. If people really find it offensive, just don't buy it. If enough other people want to buy it so that the company continues to make money selling it, who are you to say that other people who want to buy it should not be allowed to? Instead of trying to strong-arm this company into withdrawing their product lets create the kind of society where this product is not profitable.
In fact, I would argue that the real problem is not the product, but that there is a market for it. I said at the beginning that I empathize with your friend, and I really do. She is stuck between a rock and a very hard place, and shamefully our society does not really have a good answer for her. Even though I think much of our cultural evolution in the last 50 years has been positive, we have to admit that not everything has gotten better. In particular we seem to have eroded many of the social nets to help people in situations like your friend. We need to make supporting parents a priority and find new, effective ways to help parents make ends meet without neglecting their children. Sane maternity leave and paternity leave are a good starting point. Reasonably priced, safe housing and jobs that pay a living wage for a 40-hour work week are some others. We need to seriously reconsider the kind of education system and teen culture we have created that leaves us with so many single parents (I am not intending to indict your friend: I do not know her situation). In particular we need to review how we and portray fatherhood in our entertainment and culture. We can not afford for so many men to abandon their responsibilities to their partners and children.
All in all we have a lot of work to do and a baby seat seems like a silly place to pick a fight.
What makes me incandescently angry are the people who think my friend and others like her should not be allowed to own this product, without offering any sort of alternative.
I find it hard to believe any of the critics were concerned that it might not work without an ipad.
This is Kubrick.
There's no reason at all why focused play on a tablet now and again shouldn't take its place alongside books (those great ones with the thick chewable cardboard pages), dolls, chunky plastic diggers, balls and building blocks - and TV, now and again.
Getting in and playing with computers fairly early did me a world of good, and allowed me to much more effectively develop my interests. I still have an enduring love of dinosaurs thanks to an old DOS program called Burt's Dinosaurs. I played on games that taught me basic arithmetic. I learned how all manner of things worked. It was great! And in a world where technology itself is getting to be so central to everyday life, it is much better to learn how to be familiar and comfortable with it than to run away and pretend that we can insulate our children from it forever.
Tablets are interactive, media-rich, the children that play on them develop amazing coordination, and it's a format that can provide great material wrapped up in a way that makes learning fun for children.
I can only guess that so many are uncomfortable with the idea of this product because it suggests prolonged unsupervised play, rather than problems with tablets themselves?
My kid is quite sharp, but she couldn't use the computer mouse before 3 and touch screens before 2 years of age. Assuming that this is normal, what could children < 2 possibly do with it except passively consume?
And did it affect your opinion?
Being a parent is an awesome responsibility. You more than anyone or anything else shape who you kid becomes, and how they develop is determined by what you allow to be brought into their lives. The damage done by passive screentime, especially at such a young age is immense. It alters the personality of your child. It kills creativity and playful inventiveness. Which, by the way, are the core elements to success no matter what you doing in life. These parents are - little by little - doing life-long damage to the psyche of their children for the transitory and selfish reward of a few minutes downtime.
That is, as I said before, disgusting.
If Amazon sold cigarettes specifically made for children, I wouldn't buy them and I would protest.