You don't need expensive baby gear
Buying luxury baby goods is playing the short game when you should be going long
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Every once in a while a piece of writing from the “parenting culture” genre will cross my radar. I don’t read a lot in this genre because it seems like much of the advice has a short shelf life, but the New York Times recently published a piece that so perfectly captures a certain kind of consumerist approach to families that I wanted to respond here. The piece comes from a new dad who initially claims to be skeptical of very expensive baby gear, before eventually coming around and becoming a true-believing “gear dad.” Much of the piece is spent extolling the supposed benefits of luxury strollers and pricey changing pads.
I think the writer of this piece is well intentioned. But the ultimate takeaway — the thesis, whether intentional or not — is that you need really expensive gear to be a parent. Or at least, to be a good or successful or efficient parent. The writer includes a throwaway line at the end of the piece stating the opposite. But the comment rings hollow coming after 1,800 words claiming that “gear is, frankly, tremendous. It represents our progress as a species.” What?
The obvious criticism of this kind of parenting writing is that it lacks self awareness and is elitist. That definitely applies here, and I was honestly shocked by some of the gear the column recommended. It repeatedly mentions, for instance, the “Keekaroo Peanut” changing pad that apparently costs $140. And it discusses the Uppababy Vista, which the piece describes as the “Rolls-Royce of strollers.” Evidently Uppababy Vista strollers are sold at Pottery Barn and cost upwards of $1,000.
I’m not opposed to luxury items in principle, and if you like these things go get them. But recommending them to a mass audience is a different thing entirely. In the same way that most people cannot afford actual Rolls-Royces, most new parents cannot afford the Rolls-Royce of strollers.
But I think the problems go deeper than elitist celebration of consumerism. First, it implies that having kids must be really expensive. Having kids is indeed pricey thanks to medical costs and other things, but suggesting that parents will have to spend an additional several thousand dollars (or more) on “gear” adds to the perceived financial burden of having kids. And in that way this type of writing functions as a deterrent for people considering starting a family. In other words, the more costs we add on, the more people who might otherwise want to have kids are likely to feel that they can’t afford to do so.
I would argue that recommendations for extremely costly baby gear are consequently anti-family. I first mentioned this concept a while back, and explored how there’s a whole Marxist philosophy that aims to dismantle families. But there are plenty of more subtle examples that are sort of accidentally anti-family. And pushing “gear parenting” is a perfect example. I’m sure most gear heads wouldn’t think of themselves as being anti-family. But if you tell people to buy expensive gadgets, and they can’t do it, and then they feel like having a family is now further out of reach due to the costs, what’s the practical result of that argument? It’s definitely not more people feeling like having a family is doable.
The other problem with the gear dad ethos is that it encourages people to waste their resources on transitory things. I guess I’m going to sound like a poor curmudgeon here, but in the long run are your kids going to care or remember if you pushed them around town in an Uppababy Vista as opposed to, say, a rusty old wheelbarrow? I think not1.
The reality is that there are a lot of people who could probably afford the Uppababy Vista and etcetera other expensive gear, but for whom buying such things means serious tradeoffs. I’m in this category. I typically have at least $1,000 in my bank account, or else that much available on a credit card. I guess I could theoretically buy an Uppababy Vista. But doing so would mean I’m not spending $1,000 on something else for my kids.
For instance, if instead I took that money and bought a dividend-paying stock — Coca Cola, for example — I could create a recurring stream of revenue that would benefit my kids potentially for the rest of their lives. One grand in Coke stock isn’t enough to live on, but if I reinvested the dividends until my kids reached adulthood that would not be an insubstantial investment. My kids might not be the coolest kids on the playground when we roll up in our 25-year-old van2 and I dump them out of a wheelbarrow (I’m kidding, mostly), but I bet they’ll forgive me when they turn 18 and start collecting quarterly dividend checks3.
In any case, the point here is that a lot of people simply can’t afford to buy high end gear. And then there’s a whole group of people who maybe could, but for whom doing so represents a short term investment when they should be playing the long game. The New York Times writer at one point floats the idea of just using an old towel as a changing pad, for example, before coming around to the $140 option. But wouldn’t that $140 have been better spent on something with a better pay off? Like a college savings account? Or an index fund? I can attest from first-hand experience that babies don’t care if they’re changed on old towels.
Finally, my last complaint is that “gear parent” advocacy seems to be arguing that you can replace a child-rearing community (the village) with money and gadgets. I’m skeptical.
In my own case, the community has been invaluable. We’ve inherited no fewer than four strollers (want one?). I don’t even know how many car seats we have; they always seem to be lying around my house and porch. We’ve used a hand-me-down Pack-N-Play portable bed as the crib for all three of our kids. When our daughter was born earlier this year, our son was still sleeping in the Pack-N-Play. So for the first five months the new baby slept on a homemade travel bed. I had come up with the basic design, and then my mother-in-law — a master seamstress — took my rudimentary sketches and made a real object (pictured at the top).
A lot of people don’t have the networks in place to have this kind of support. We didn’t when we had our first kid. Getting these networks involved reorienting a lot of our priorities, moving 700 miles, and being cool with gear that has gone through several families before us (and which will surely be passed on to several more after us).
What my experience has ultimately taught me is that perhaps instead of celebrating the baby industrial complex4, we should be talking about how more parents can tap into better support networks. I’ve saved many thousands of dollars by not having to buy luxury gadgets. How can that experience become more widely available? And are there ways to help would-be parents know they don’t have to be Uppababy Vista rich to have kids?
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The New York Times pieces suggests that the benefit of luxury baby gear is that it’s more convenient. But it wasn’t actually clear to me how it was more convenient. Will an Uppababy Vista get me from Point A to Point B faster than cheaper strollers? It wasn’t really clear what the specific benefits of a lot of this gear are.
After my last piece on our old van, my wife mentioned that some people might find my argument unpersuasive because they’d be embarrassed to drive a beat up old vehicle. I have to admit, this argument did not cross my mind while writing the piece. I think of cars as tools, like a hammer or screwdriver. If it works, it works. That’s not to say I don’t like nice things. I wouldn’t mind owning, say, a vintage Ferrari. But for the time being that’s not really in the budget, and in the meantime I’d just as soon drive an old van than a new Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey.
I don’t actually own any Coca Cola stock. But my wife and I have tried to make conservative, long term investments that will pay off down the road. I’m not an investment expert and frankly my wife handles most of that stuff, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Admittedly, the New York Times piece was from a tech writer, not a philosopher or policy wonk. I get that when your job is to review gadgets, you review gadgets. My complaint has more to do with how this particular piece epitomizes a genre of luxury-oriented parenting advice.