Car seats

By Chi-Young Kim

This will not be news to anyone who has had a baby in the U.S.: niche industries have sprouted up for every possible aspect of childrearing.

Infant CPR classes are the norm. Sleep consultants, cloth diaper delivery services, healthy meal deliveries, lactation consultants, and even acupuncture and spinal adjustment for infants are common in my city. So I don’t know why it surprised me when I found out that there is an entire industry of certified car seat technicians who educate caregivers about safe car seat use.

Thanks to the movies, I knew long before I ever contemplated having a baby that the hospital would not release you without a car seat. As I neared my due date, I became aware that parents get their car seat installation checked out by a technician, and that if you waited long enough and had enough patience to call the police station fifty consecutive times, you can get an appointment to get a trained police officer check your installation for free. I can’t say no to anything free.

Although my husband was confident about his installation skills, it turned out he had done nearly everything wrong. The seat was in the wrong position (middle of the back seat is the safest, the officer informed me, rattling off some scary statistics), it was too loose, and the angle was off.

Long after my daughter outgrew her infant car seat and moved into a 40-pound behemoth seat, we finally got around to hiring a car seat technician to come to our house and check our installation in three cars: mine, my husband’s, and my mother-in-law’s.

After an hour of tugging, jiggling, and pushing, he had taught us everything we ever needed to know, and he also told us we’d done it correctly in only one out of the three cars. Currently, parents are advised to keep their child facing backward until at least 2, as rear-facing positions are safest in the event of a car crash.

Experts say we should keep children rear facing until they outgrow their seats. Since we’re overly cautious, we still have our daughter facing backward, months after she turned two. But I don’t think even we can keep her at it the whole time, as the seat we have is rated for rear facing until 45 pounds. She’s only 24 pounds now, so that means she’ll probably enter first grade sitting backward. Somehow I don’t think she’ll be okay with that.

Because Americans are so zealous about car seats, it’s always jarring to visit Korea and see grandmothers holding infants on their laps while toddlers are standing on the passenger seat, looking out the window.

The first time we went with our daughter, my dad borrowed a seat from my cousin, who no longer needed it. It didn’t occur to me to ask what condition it was in. When we opened the door to my dad’s car, our mouths dropped open; half the car seat cover and foam were missing, and there was packing tape wrapped around the entire bottom part.

"It’s really secure!” my dad crowed, mentioning only then that he’d used tape because a crucial piece was broken. Reasoning that millions of babies rode in even less secure contraptions and turned out fine (that might have been magical thinking on my part), we just used the taped up seat. I discreetly told my husband to reinstall it, but he murmured that he was afraid the whole thing might fall apart if he tried.

The same car seat greeted us on our second trip home. Although my equally cautious dad likes to talk about how they used a car seat for me when I was a baby despite everyone thinking they were crazy, he must have mellowed in the intervening decades. He insisted that many people still don’t use car seats, and even when they do, nobody knows how to do it correctly. His survey had a sample size of one: my cousin, who allegedly told my dad that he just installs the seat even though he knows he is doing it wrong and hopes for the best.

But next time, we’re bringing our own. Now that I’ve been thoroughly educated about the mechanics of a car crash, I’d rather make my husband lug that giant steel apparatus through the airport. Especially since this time we have to pay for an airplane seat for our daughter.

We’re hoping we can install the car seat on the plane and have her sleep in it. Since she happily naps in the car, maybe the same seat will do the trick. That might also be more magical thinking.

To prepare, I’ve begun telling my daughter that we’re all going on the plane to visit grandma and grandpa in Korea, that she will sit in her seat with the seat belt on, and we’ll read lots and lots of stories and even watch TV. My daughter seems very excited about the whole thing. She cries out, ``go to twee-ah (Korea) on da plane in da sky!” and makes flying motions with her arms.

I’m going to employ some more magical thinking and make myself believe that she’ll sit nicely in her car seat for eleven hours straight.

Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Young-ha, and Jo Kyung-ran. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.com or via her website, chiyoungkim.com.