Babywearing: a silly word for something parents have likely been doing since the beginning of time: strapping their infants to their bodies and getting on with life. With hands free to work, eat and drink – and a baby who swiftly falls asleep – it should be an uncontroversial tool in the parenting armoury. But as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, discovered this week (when photos emerged of her carrying a lopsided Archie in a sling) there’s nothing like babywearing to get the mother-shamers all fired up.
It’s a decade since I became a mother. 10 years since the visions I’d had of gliding through the streets, a coffee in the integral pram cup holder and a basketful of organic shopping underneath, were shattered by my real daughter. She cried when the pram was still and she cried when it was in motion. She cried when I ran down the road with it to see if speed would make a difference, showering the passing postman in spit as I tried to recreate the white noise I’d been told would mimic womb sounds and calm her.
And then I tried the sling. A few circuits around the living room and she settled. I tentatively made myself a cup of coffee. I went out, and discovered a returned capacity to notice daffodils in the shop windows. I bought long-needed deodorant and ate food with two hands as crumbs dropped on her little downy head as she slept. That sling saved my sanity and gave me a much-needed reminder of what life was and could be again.
With her infant part-hidden from view, away from society’s policing gaze, the babywearing woman pushes society’s buttons hard.
Yet with my babywearing revelation (one that lasted the best part of six years between my two kids) I found myself being dealt a side-order of shame. In a society that has its opinions firmly in our uteruses and nurseries, the sight of a woman with a baby in a sling seems to trigger something that feels a lot like surveillance. There was the builder who shouted down from a scaffolding tower that I was going to ‘kill my baby’ carrying him like that. The woman who expressed her anxiety that I would fall and ‘squash the dear little thing flat’. Friends who exclaimed with faux-humoured annoyance that they hadn’t really had a chance to see my second baby’s face and asked if he really existed.
I doubt if the pictures of Meghan represent the pinnacle of her sling-wearing achievements. Yes that baby is a bit wonky; as if her shoulder strap has momentarily slipped down, or she’d been feeding him as she walked – one of my favourite stealth parenting tricks. But take secret photos of any of us parenting and you’ll catch imperfect moments daily. Obvious as that is, a lack of maternal perfection is not well tolerated. Even outside the celebrity bubble there’s often someone there to tut at a tantrum, suggest we shouldn’t be checking that important work email or tell us our kid is too warm/cold/loud/quiet, too old to breastfeed or too perfect to be given formula.
My work as an activist and writer around women’s rights in pregnancy and birth has made it clear to me that, underneath a kindly raised eyebrow or busy body concern, is a deeply-rooted belief stretching back through history and looping vice-like to the present, that mothers are the greatest threat to their children. Mothers with our faulty bodies, our unhealthy habits, our unacceptable choices in childbirth, our feeding failures and our parenting which is always one step away from neglect.
A mother with hands free to do as she pleases, advertising her complex, three-dimensional glory, is a scary sight to our still-patriarchal world. With her infant part-hidden from view, away from society’s policing gaze, pressed happily against a human time bomb that is yet to be modelled and moulded into the rule-following ideal, the babywearing woman pushes society’s buttons hard. And what the world is really saying to her, when it fusses and frowns over a baby in a sling, is ‘get that precious baby a little further away from this thing that we don’t trust and can’t yet control’.
How to babywear safely
Babywearing can be a convenient, beneficial and cheap way to transport your baby. Remember to:
Carry your baby tightly.
Ensure you can see their face when you glance down
Have them close enough to your head to kiss
Ensure their chin is never forced down against their chest
Choose a carrier that supports their back and places their hips in the optimum position
Visit the babywearing and sling safety websites for more information or pick up a copy of Why Babywearing Matters.