Stroller Wars

The last time I gave any thought to baby strollers was when my older brother pulled one up a hill in our neighborhood, got to the very top, and let go. With me in it. The stroller shot down like a bat out of hell, while my nine-month old veins pumped full of adrenaline, shrieking in fear and delight. Repeat. The only thing between me and serious head trauma was the relative lack of cars in mid-70’s Israel.

For the next 35 years, didn’t give a whole lot more thought to strollers, but now, as baby’s arriving, I see them everywhere, and am fixated not so much by what’s in it, but what brand it is and who does the pushing. I guess it’s a simple matter of perspective. One day they’re invisible, and now they’ve got my full attention.

Shifting perspective is like my 5′2” friend who, as we were walking into a huge crowd of people during a meet-and-greet, told me “doesn’t this huge crowd frighten you a bit?” “Not really, because the medication works really well”, I joked. Then she grabbed my arm and pulled me down a few inches, to her height, and my whole line of vision changed. What seemed to be a pretty decent sized crowd instantly became a morass much more bewildering to go through, and I felt like I needed a machete similar to a Victorian-era explorer wading through the deepest, darkest jungle.

Expecting a baby pulled my line of vision down 6 inches. And now I see strollers everywhere. Last weekend’s huge bluegrass festival at Golden Gate Park was a good place to see them. One can easily spot the parenting philosophy and socio-economic status of the happy couple simply by their choice of strollers.

If a couple has an infant less than six months old, they’ve got two choices – either carry it around “close to the vest” in a Baby Bjorn / Asian-Mayan sling wrap, or push it like an older kid in a stroller. So if you see that Baby Bjorn, then the couple is probably an adherent to a philosophy espoused by Dr. John Sears called “Attachment Parenting”. This philosophy is exactly what it sounds like – the baby must always be in physical contact with one of the parents throughout the entire infancy – the baby literally does not touch the ground for the first six months. So if it’s a six month or younger infant in a stroller, then the presumably healthy couple is not familiar with Attachment Parenting (unlikely in San Francisco), or they’re simply saying “screw you” to Dr. Sears.

Once the baby is past six months, then the parents have a bewildering choice of strollers. It seems that the recession has put a bit of a damper on the market for “Bugaboos”, super high-end strollers that routinely cost $1,000. I’ve been seeing a lot less of these in the past six months. Maybe it’s a sign of the times, though they’re still extremely obnoxious, like a tank sized SUV. What’s a San Francisco yuppie to do? Well, the stroller version of the de rigueur Toyota Prius is probably the Maclaren, a British designed hybrid between the high-end Bugaboo and the super low-end umbrella stroller. At $250, it seems to have weathered and prospered through the recession – these things are everywhere in San Francisco, at least in our neck of the woods at yuppie central, Noe Valley.

Taking a stroll towards poorer and browner Mission neighborhood, however, and the stroller scene changes yet again. No Bugaboos. Much fewer Maclarens. Now it’s time for the old-school folding umbrella type strollers that everyone used to have up until ten years ago, super lightweight, cheap plastic, but seems to last forever. It’s the Daihatsu Charade of strollers.

All the parents seem to be, if not happy, then content with the type of strollers they wheel their kid around. And the baby? It doesn’t matter to them one bit if they’re being rolled around in the pedestrian equivalent of an SUV, Prius, or Charade. Someone else is doing the heavy pushing, and they’ve dozed off long ago.