History of Car seats

[littleangelfire]

This article isn't new or anything, but in researching someone's yahoo question I found it and it was really interesting. It certainly explains why so many of our older generations think we're nutso for suggesting car seat use.
http://www.thehistoryof.net/history-of-car-seats.html

I was born in 81, and I know my mom always had me in a car seat, but its pretty obvious that wasn't the case for everyone.

[crunchierthanthou]

Interesting read. :) although, I don't think they are in every vehicle carrying children. There will always be morons who choose to skip them.

[littleangelfire]

Interesting read. :) although, I don't think they are in every vehicle carrying children. There will always be morons who choose to skip them.

Definitely! We had family at our house for my uncle's funeral a few weeks ago, and I drove behind 2 of my cousins and a ocuple of their kids, age 3 & 4 I think (not sure - my 3 cousins are my age and all have 2-4 kids each already. :) ) And the whole way these kids were LOOKING at me while I was driving. And when they got here I checked in the back seat, they were both in backless boosters! Definitely not the time or place to mention it, but ugh!

[Monzie]

My parents had me in a carseat back in the early 70's, but they were definitely in the minority. I remember the seat well because they also used it for my sister, who is five years younger than me. DOM apparently wasn't a big concern back then. ;) It had a slick vinyl cover and a metal and hard plastic bar that held the baby in place....oh so comfy and safe! :rolleyes: I don't know how it was secured in the car, though, because my dad always jammed the seatbelts way down into the crevices between the seats so no one would accidentally sit on on a buckle and hurt themselves. God forbid anyone would actually want to use one of those crazy new-fangled things!

My MIL lay my infant husband in a wooden fruit crate that was bolted to the hump between the two front seats in her crazy hippie van. She drove with him that way from Texas to Haight-Ashbury to Portland, OR to Wisconsin.

In spite of all that, we both made it to adulthood and managed to procreate. Its a miracle!

[tjham]

Good article. Wish it had pictures though!

[BookMama]

Interesting read. :) although, I don't think they are in every vehicle carrying children.

:yeahthat: Ha, they should come to the seat check events I do (in a very poor area). I would agree with "most" but certainly not "nearly all" as the article said.

I too would have liked pictures. Wouldn't it be cool to see pics of that first Swedish RF seat?!

[kangato2roos]

That was an interesting read, thanks for the link!

I know both my sister (1976) and I (1981) were in carseats, but I also know my mother was considered an absolute nutjob for having us in carseats at all, nevermind until we were about 6. I think my sister was out of a seat by the time she was 6 and I KNOW I was in one through first grade when my mother finally took me out of the seat because I was the only kid still in one. I was just TINY.

Alternately, my dh and his siblings (1977, 1981, and 1983 respectively), never rode in carseats, not a single one of them. Not even as infants.

[littleangelfire]

Even today, I know we see gross misuse, and truthfully in poorer areas, it doesn't surprise me as much, although I myself am pretty gosh darned poor. But in pooling my small resources with my parents we actually live in an affluent county albeit on the edge, we're in it. :) So you'd think the reverse would be true that people who supposedly have a little more assets would know better, which we know is so not true. Driving home today I stopped at a light next to a car and had to double take - there was a little girl, probably 3 years old, standing in between the front and back seats talking to what I assumed was daddy. And he was handing her some food or something. And I saw no booster where she was to be sitting, either. :( Had his window been down its quite possible I would've said something. But it wasn't. So I drove off calling him a ding-dong with my son in the back asking 'mommy, whe he a ding-dong? that not nice."
:o