I was coming up to my 40th birthday when I said to my boss one day that I was afraid of falling in to the habit of saying, all too often Oh we tried that 20 years ago & it didn’t work
But you have to because it is true – sometimes, he said
I thought of that this morning when I heard that babies may be psychologically damaged by being pushed in a forwards facing buggy – scientific research has shown
There was a lively debate about this back in the 1960s when a push chair was quite a newfangled thing – before that babies graduated from large old fashioned perambulators straight to their own two feet
(Just as an aside - what on earth did we call the next new thing – the very lightweight push chair which folded up & hooked over your arm like an umbrella, all the easier to get on to the bus with? I do not think it was either buggy or stroller)
As far as I know the argument was never settled. A baby facing backwards could interact with Mummy (real men did not push push chairs in those days); one facing forwards got mental stimulation from the changing scene
Now science has come up with the answer – based, if I heard the young woman aright on the radio this morning, on a detailed analysis of 20 different outings
