Hey moms, are you still pushing your child away from you in a heartless stroller?
Or are you carrying your Mini-Me in one of those over-the-shoulder sling devices — no doubt engineered by fiends — that Consumer Reports said can lead to deadly skull fractures?
As if breast vs. bottle, public schooling vs. private, and working vs. staying home weren’t giving the moms of Gotham enough to stress about, now there’s a new debate: slings vs. strollers.
Each comes fully loaded with stereotypes. Stroller moms are corporation zombies with pimped-out rides that cost more than their first car. Slingers are crunchy nutters overly attached to their kids.
Yet slings are on trend. Noted role models Brad Pitt, Brooke Shields, Keri Russell and Rachel Weisz have been photographed wearing their little DNA banks around town. Gwen Stefani’s tot tote was festooned with a Gucci logo (imported, $760). Madonna’s was even more fashionably accessorized, with a genuine African baby (imported, not available in stores). Meanwhile, stroller-pushing moms such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Garner remain the first ladies of Pramalot.
Upper West Side mom Leigh Pennebaker, a sculptor who blogs about her two boys, Jackson, 2½, and Walker, 5 months, at marvelouskiddo.blogspot.com, is an unapologetic slinger.
“It’s just a great option that lots of people don’t know about, but it’s catching on,” Pennebaker says. “With my second son, I have exclusively worn him and not put him in a stroller.”
Wearing her baby like a second skin gives her a snuggly-wuggly high.
“Being able to keep your baby close to you and on your body is so important. Especially for newborns, to be skin-to-skin with your mother and to be there for breastfeeding on demand is so crucial and wonderful,” she says.
“It soothes the baby — and you can carry on doing what you want without being constrained. I’ve heard of studies being done that [sling] babies have an advantage in cognitive development and language skills.”
(In fact, no such studies exist.)
Meanwhile, Jackie Quan, a real estate agent who lives in the Financial District, is a proud stroller mom. She swears by the five (!) strollers she has for her two kids, one 4, the other just under a year, and says the “yoga moms” who use only slings “can be annoying.”
“There are sling mamas that can be very judgmental about it,” agrees writer Amy Sohn, who satirized the Park Slope momfia in her novel “Prospect Park West.”
“But the joke was always that the slings are way more trouble than they’re worth, they hurt your back, they’re hard to put on, hard to take off — they tend to find the back of the closet quickly.”
Not at all, says Anna Fader, editor of the site Mommy Poppins, who calls slings much easier than strollers, especially on subways or in crowded stores. This week, when watching a 3-month old, she found she was able to work out on Wii Fit with a baby strapped to her.
“You can even use a sling with a toddler who can walk — when they get tired you can put them in your sling,” says Fader. “The sling is small. You can fold it and fit it in your handbag. I like that freedom of not having to carry a lot of stuff.”
Strollers have also recently suffered lots of bad press.
This week, The Post reported the story of Brooklyn toddler Shannon Windram, who was 2½ in 2004 when, according to her father, a Maclaren stroller sheared off part of a finger. Maclaren and Graco have issued huge product recalls for similar defects — 2.5 million strollers recalled and counting.
And then there’s the cost issue. The most overpriced strollers, Fader says, though functional, “became a status thing and it became like a craze where everybody had to have one.”
Sohn fires back, “It’s kind of obscene to pay $100 for just basically a piece of cloth.” And, actually, $100 might be a bargain. Baby-carrier merchant Metro Minis on Park Avenue, which says sales are up about 15 percent since the stroller recalls began, sells an organic silk sling, the Sakura Bloom, that goes for $500.
One former sling devotee who changed her mind is Leigh Goldman Balber, editor of the tot throw-down site Urban Baby. While she used to nestle her first child in a sling for eight to 10 hours a day, her second child “got too heavy too fast” to make it work.
“No matter how these carriers say they’re going to distribute the weight, heavy is heavy,” Balber says. “By about 15 pounds, I just couldn’t keep him in it.”
Moreover, she says, “Some of the ones with rings you need a Ph.D. to figure out. You know how when you get in a hammock and it’s unbalanced? You’re afraid the baby is gonna flip out of it.”
In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has documented a risk of “positional asphyxiation” in slings.
Last year, Consumer Reports listed “sling carriers” under the heading, “Five Products Not To Buy for Your Baby,” noting that “over the past five years, at least four babies died and there have been many reports of serious injury associated with the use of sling-type carriers.” It’s reports like these that continue to throw kindling on the online flame war. “People are too judgmental of other people’s parenting system,” argues Quan. “There’s too many controversies. I feel like life is complicated enough.”
Parents magazine editor Dana Points couldn’t agree more: “If a sling works for you, great. If a stroller works for you, great. Because the end result is happy parents make happy children.”
Strollers vs. Slings
It may not look like a fair fight, but in the match between the stroller — that SUV of the sidewalk — and the gossamer shoulder-mounted baby carrier, lots of New York moms are lining up in each corner. How do the combatants in this baby mama blood feud measure up? Let’s take a look:
THE STROLLER
FAVORED BY: Expense-account execs with weekly shiatsu massages
TOP OF THE LINE MODEL: $1,200 Stokke Xplory Complete (aluminum, automobile-grade plastic, mosquito net included). It’s Russell Crowe’s son’s ride.
‘WOW’ LINE ON MOM’S RESUMÉ: Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School
LIKELY NAMES OF PRECIOUS CARGO: Emily, Justin, Liam
REASON FOR HOSPITAL VISIT: Liam’s severed fingers
CHILD-REARING POLICY: Not sure . . . she’ll have to ask Nanny.
MATERNAL OLYMPICS OBSESSION: Who makes those darling figure skaters’ outfits?
WHAT MOM IS HEARD TELLING HUBBY IN CALL ON THE STREET: “Please tell me you didn’t forget the edamame, again.”
BABY’S EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK: No problem! Mom got me into the right preschool while I was still a fetus.
MOM’S OPINION ON SARAH PALIN: Loathes
THE BABY CARRIER
FAVORED BY: Orgomoms who feel bad about Darfur and all that kind of thing
TOP OF THE LINE MODEL: $760 Gucci baby carrier (but only Gwen Stefani doesn’t find the plastered “G” logo embarassing.)
‘WOW’ LINE ON MOM’S RESUMÉ: Hampshire College, Peace Studies
LIKELY NAMES OF PRECIOUS CARGO: Loki, Rainbow, Wynter
REASON FOR HOSPITAL VISIT: Loki’s smashed skull
CHILD-REARING POLICY: No TV, gluten, processed foods, fun.
MATERNAL OLYMPICS OBSESSION: Why rape Nature by skiing down her voluptuous curves?
WHAT MOM IS HEARD TELLING HUBBY IN CALL ON THE STREET: N/A (Is offended that you assume she is hetero, married, or uses a cellphone.)
BABY’S EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK: 12 years of homeschooling. Will be only kid in Ivy League who brings own spinning wheel and loom to dorm.
MOM’S OPINION ON SARAH PALIN: Despises
kyle.smith@nypost.com