That article is insane. Most of the suggestions (except for "consider hiring a consultant" and "don't have blinds because if you forget even once INSTANT DEAD BABY) are basically reasonable, but the whole tone is "your babies will die unless you do this perfectly." No wonder people reacted how they did.
In any case, far be it from me to argue that people largely don't understand statistics, but that article didn't mention any; sure, childproofing has saved children who would otherwise have died in preventable accidents, but how many? What was the baseline rate?
I was out with a friend and his son last weekend on one of his pretend gay-dad outings.* While his daughter is somewhat tenative, his son is hilariously robust. Completely beyond fearless to the point where it's like he's taunting Darwin.
Run full tilt into a heavy object? Bounce off it and toddle off without a peep? No problem. Climbing the big ladder although he's only been walking three or four months? No problem. Kids all around in hysterics after bumping their knee while L' merrily falls flat on his face on concrete and gets up giggling.
* it's a running joke with my mate and a couple of our other friends who are also stay-at-home or semi-stay-at-home Dads. Two men of a certain age in the park, with a child (or two).
We have not child-proofed our new house to the extent the fostering licensors demand, which I really do need to fix. It's just annoying to have to meet baby-level standards when what I need is to deter little kids.
At my parents' house last night, Alex smashed face-first into their storm door, exactly like a bird running into a window. Luckily he thought it was hilarious since I really couldn't help laughing. He also managed to trip over his sister's towel while burritoed in a towel himself, which left rugburn on his face that has luckily disappeared. I'm reminded constantly how lucky we were that Mara is so incredibly cautious and gentle about everything.
What was the baseline rate?
Yeah, I would like to see estimated averted risk for each intervention reported against some risk that people are very likely to be taking without thinking about it, like the risk per thousand miles (seems like a low-normal estimate for a year's worth of car travel for a baby in the US) driving with a properly installed car seat.
Some things that people get worried about seem very low odds. For a baby to hurt themselves with an uncovered electrical outlet, they'd need a metal tool and a fair amount of manual dexterity -- not that it's never going to happen, but it just doesn't seem likely enough to be worth the plastic covers.
you don't think so? I got thrown across the room by a shock as a kid, but from a malfunctioning dishwasher. my brother absolutely stuck a fork into an electrical socket as a toddler and was carefully working it in when my mom found him. he went to the drawer, got the fork, and then started working on the outlet. I don't think this is unlikely toddler behavior.
the risk per thousand miles (seems like a low-normal estimate for a year's worth of car travel for a baby in the US)
New Yorkers are adorable. (That is, I bet that's a very, very low estimate.)
car seats have undoubtedly saved the most lives, but I'd bet there's been a significant drop in accidental drownings, too, with pool fences and self-locking gates. though they are hideous. "back to sleep" certainly saved plenty of kids. and it's not as though moms in the 70s were encouraging children to drink drano, but neither did they, say, lock the floor level cabinets where the drano was, at least in my experience.
IIRC, in the UK at least, the plastic socket covers can actually bypass some of the built in electrical safety features.
So using the plastic socket covers is worse, from a safety point of view, than not using them at all.
Assuming electrocutions get rolled into "Fire/Burn", there appear to be about 0.6 deaths per 100,000 children (up to age 18) per year. Assuming a uniform distribution across the age range (which seems unlikely, but I'm not really sure how it would be nonuniform) that means toddlers (age 2-5, say?) die from all Fire/Burn at a rate of 0.1 per 100,000. Since that certainly includes things like house fires and so on, I'd imagine the electrocution death rate is quite a bit lower than that.
Er, duh, here's the link I was looking at. (It's US statistics from 2006.)
5: Wouldn't he have had to get the fork in both sides of the outlet simultaneously to actually get a shock (although I'm vaguely remembering a conversation here where someone told me I was wrong about that. But without remembering the conversation I can't really see how. I suppose if he was grounded to something else, maybe)? Which in the US would have been low-voltage enough to shock him but most likely not do any lasting damage, just like happened to you.
It just seems like a really unlikely way to get hurt.
One of ours did the probe-the-socket thing (with a small screwdriver IMS). Same one who tried /really hard/ to pull the bookshelf (loaded with maybe half a ton of books) down on himself.
Babies and toddlers cover a wide, wide range of personality types, from Alameida's cautious little girl to my risk-o-philic little boy and beyond. You maybe can't fully appreciate the statistics until you've spent a little time as a caregiver to a kid who's out at the far end of that distribution. I know there's stuff that, ten years ago, I would have said "that's ridiculous -- not one kid in a million would ever..." And today I'm like "oh yeah, he totall did that."
Doug M.
9: Although those are statistics including childproofers -- if a large percentage of households with children have outlet covers, then the low odds could demonstrate that they work. You'd want electrocutions broken out separately from before and after outlet covers became popular to know anything. (I mean, I think you're right, but I don't think that stat is much help.)
13: well, right, in theory, sure. But the fact that the rate was insanely low in 2006 (before the advent of the sliding covers mentioned in the article) would seem to indicate that the sliding covers are not actually an innovation driven by an epidemic of deadly electrocutions.
Now of course, it's a miracle my children survived. I've told the story repeatedly of the morning we slept a little late on a weekend, and found that 3-year old Newt had pulled a chair into the kitchen, gotten a chef's knife out of the block, and used it to spread jam on an English muffin for himself. (Didn't manage to toast it.) When admonished to never never never do that again, he told Buck "It's all right. I was careful."
Way fewer children die now in easily preventable accidents. Yay!
Here's some data on changes in child mortality for ages 1-4 over time. You can see in figures 1 and 2 that the overall rate has dropped a lot, and in 3 and 4 that the portion of those deaths due to unintentional injury has remained roughly the same - and hence the rate of such deaths has likewise gone down a lot.
All of which reminds me that I still have two bookshelves that I haven't bolted to the wall. The hardware for doing so is sitting on one of those shelves. I'll get to it next weekend, I'm sure.
what my family always had was gun safety problems. that's why we learned important things about guns, which I have made my daughters learn, even though there are no guns in narnia. it's cute to hear them reel it off "always assume any gun is loaded, even if the clip is empty! don't point the gun ant anyone you don't intend to shoot! keep your finger off the trigger until you really mean to shoot someone, but for reals." of course I mention step 1, don't pick the gun up, but let's be serious, guns are fascinating. my family let me shoot plenty as a young kid, under (stoned, drunken) supervision, and got me an air rifle when I was old enough...uh, well, maybe on the young side. hm.
And Sally did pull an insufficiently secured dresser over (pulled the drawers out to climb them). She successfully leapt out of the way when it toppled, but that scared the hell out of us; we'd attached the bookshelves to the wall, but didn't think of the dressers. So, I'm not saying that all childproofing is nonsense, certainly.
17: the pdf doesn't explicitly say, but I would bet that the vast majority of that decrease since 1970 is due to increases in motor vehicle safety, and that some significant chunk of the disparity in poor counties is due to relatively shittier pedestrian accomodations.
Always assume the gun is loaded except when you want to shoot somebody. In that case, check that the gun is loaded.
Given the uncontroversial nature of the topic, I'm really impressed with the ability of the NYT commenters to be assholes about it.
Sheesh, this is enough to put any parent into anxiety produced lock-down. ... pay attention to your child for Pete's Sake; put down the iPhone and develop the sixth sense that comes with being a parent.
...
nothing is as safe and secure as permanent supervision. We don't let our son out of our sight for more than 20 seconds.
...
and we wonder why children have no sense of self preservation?
I decided that the toilet seat lock cover thing was bullshit, mostly because it looked so ugly. Plastic things in the sockets because, why not. It was easy enough to put the dangerous kitchen things out of the way. Kid still alive at 4.
My totally uninformed guess is that swimming pools, cars, and drinking poisonous cleaning crap or medicines are a huge chunk of the problem. The Venetian blinds thing seems nuts unless you plan on regularly getting blackout drunk and letting your 14 month old wander around unsupervised.
24.2: 76% of the problem according to the link I dumped earlier, but by far the bulk of that (60%) is cars, and drowning is less of a problem than suffocation/strangulation. Probably pf's link would be more useful, but it's a pdf and I don't feel like finding and opening it again.
Yeah, my guess is that swimming pools are horribly dangerous if you have one, but not a big deal over the population because most people don't.
We lost a kid for a few minutes yesterday- he's a wanderer, unlike the other two. Our back door leads to the yard and basement and is unproofed because it's a lever and we haven't found a latch guard that works well. We're paranoid about the front door because it leads to a 4 lane parkway so when we couldn't find him we ran out there even though it was still closed with child proof knob in place. Turns out we went down the back and was trying to open the door to the yard because he wanted to play outside (which would have been fine, it's fenced in.) The basement would have been dangerous but it's dark so he would be scared to go there.
Darkness: nature's childproofing.
5: My son was caught trying to do the same thing way back when. If some action is possible some kid will die trying it.
It is really, really handy that small children are so small, because otherwise they would be a terrifying menace to themselves and others. This way, you get a chance to teach them "don't hit your sister on the head" before they are strong enough to try doing it with e.g. a sledgehammer rather than a stuffed toy.
My niece has two symmetrical flat scars on her forehead, just around her hairline, as she stood a bit too close to my nephew who was wielding a claw hammer.
30: It's also handy that they mostly don't talk well until they're a little older, because you don't know what they're really thinking. Sally was precocious with the sentence structure and the diction, and the things that she said in the playground as a toddler were scary as all get out. She's shown no unusual tendency towards violence as an older kid (assuming intrasibling violence doesn't count as unusual), so I figure most toddlers have that psychopath thing going on inside and just can't get it communicated clearly.
My wife's brother was the other kid, the one who drowned in a lake when he was 6 in 1956 (before my wife was born), in circumstances where any middleclass kid that age today would be wearing floaties, and the parents would be wondering if they're worth the trouble and how are kids going to learn to look out for themselves if we keep them too safe.
An elderly relative recently transferrered the home movies from the vacations of that era onto DVD's. First thought on watching: cool, you'd never see six toddlers bouncing around in the back of a moving pickup truck today. Second thought: oh yeah, and one of them died the next year.
This way, you get a chance to teach them "don't hit your sister on the head" before they are strong enough to try doing it with e.g. a sledgehammer rather than a stuffed toy.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. I knew somebody who had nine fingers because he was playing with one end of a set of long handled pruning shears at the same time his brother was playing with the other end. They were both under three at the time.
Oh good lord, I shouldn't be reading this thread. I don't think we've bolted anything to the wall yet and Hokey Pokey is definitely a climber.
But the fact that the rate was insanely low in 2006 (before the advent of the sliding covers mentioned in the article) would seem to indicate that the sliding covers are not actually an innovation driven by an epidemic of deadly electrocutions.
The sliding covers are a reaction to the old covers being a pain in the ass, but not necessarily such a pain in the ass that enough parents disregarded them to cause an epidemic. We've got the old style and I can't stand them.
All of which reminds me that I still have two bookshelves that I haven't bolted to the wall.
I finally did that yesterday. At the hardware store I ran into a friend getting supplies for the exact same thing - amazing what a couple little earthquakes will do.
The electrical outlet stuff is interesting. The built-in shutters that attM mentions as a standard feature of UK outlets is pretty much unknown in the US, although newer code requires a vaguely similar tamper-resistance (you have to push into both sides of the outlet at once), and I've been buying those to slowly replace the old crappy outlets in my house.
I don't think we've bolted anything to the wall yet
I'm sure it will be okay.
When my brother was 2 or 3, he found a thin metal ruler in my dad's desk and stuck it into an electrical outlet. The resulting flash singed his clothes, part of his hair, and left a huge black burn mark on the wall. Fortunately he was unhurt, although totally stunned.
Anyway, maybe it's fine not to put those plastic covers over your outlets, but if so, don't also leave a thin strip of electrically conductive material around for your kids to play with.
If some action is possible some kid or inebriated adult will die trying it.
30: The physics of falling bodies works in favor of little kids, too. I gather that the force of falling down increases with age in a more geometric than linear fashion*, because of the way height and weight work.
*I have no idea if my use of "geometric" and "linear" here is technically correct. The point is, if you're twice as big, you land with more than twice the force.
44: I think add some hand-waving about the square-cube law and you're golden.
41 is hilarious.
18: The gun thing is related to the Swiss cheese formulation of safety rules. Only if all the holes line up does someone get shot by accident. I can appreciate that, the aforementioned kid put a round through the kitchen ceiling once. The don't point rule saved one of our asses. Now, every time he pretends to infallibilty one of us will do the finger-gun-shooting gesture pointing up.
18: The gun thing is related to the Swiss cheese formulation of safety rules. Only if all the holes line up does someone get shot by accident. I can appreciate that, the aforementioned kid put a round through the kitchen ceiling once. The don't point rule saved one of our asses. Now, every time he pretends to infallibilty one of us will do the finger-gun-shooting gesture pointing up.
Who does not know that a horse falling from a height of three or four cubits will break his bones, while a dog falling from the same height or a cat from a height of eight or ten cubits will suffer no injury? Equally harmless would be the fall of a grasshopper from a tower or the fall of an ant from the distance of the moon. Do not children fall with impunity from heights which would cost their elders a broken leg or perhaps a fractured skull?
And screw the "tap on the trackpad means click" feature and the overly sensitive mouse buttons! Steve's sentence in purgatory is hereby increased by a few eons.
The physics of falling bodies works in favor of little kids,
Yes, this is known as the wee body problem.
In my city, an autistic kid was found alive this week after wandering away from his dad. He was gone for 4 days. Huge numbers of volunteers were searching for him.
My daughter has been on a destroy misson. In the last week, she has broken three drinking glasses, a bowl, my sunglasses, and various other small items.
This morning, we had an all out battle with me trying to protect stuff as she tried to throw stuff. The battle started while she was in the shower. Fortunately, I was able to get her out before she hurt herself. Then, I had naked, wet, screaming girl racing around the house, ripping off sheets and throwing them while I walked quickly next to her, saying in a calm voice "Use your words. Why are you angry? Use your words please."
"NO WORDS!!!!! NO WORDS!!!"
Finally, she calmed down and decided that school sounds like fun on Halloween day.
Wanna know the best thing about divorce?? She is at her mom's house tonight!! woo hoo!
53: Man, I don't know how you manage (that's not helpful of me, I realize, but I want to sympathize and I've got no idea of how.) Dealing with an irrationally violent adult-sized person in your home has to be unspeakably difficult.
54: Yeah. I'd have fallen apart long ago, I think. That's amazing greatness, Will.
||
Yay, I'm eligible for the Metropolitan Credit Union despite not being a city employee. All I have to do is bring them a couple of things and, you guessed it, five dollars.
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57: Thrown to the lions, indeed. Where's your messiah now, Tebow?
57: That was my favorite thing to happen in like a month.
I almost killed myself climbing up on a cabinet/bookshelf when I was three or four or so. Was trying to get to a game or something on the top shelf and pulled it down on top of me. Luckily I had tried standing on the toybox first. The toybox held the thing up and stopped it from crushing me to death.
Will, you're such an inspiration to me. I'm just dealing with three preschoolers and one furious adult who won't use her words but certainly has the ability to do so. I'm astonished by people who make themselves have the physical and mental strength to do more.
I have a cousin who was brought home by the police after being discovered riding her bigwheel on the nearby interstate highway. There are a lot of stories like that about her, but her mother, my aunt, still gets the most sympathetic looks when the bigwheel story comes up at holidays.
Can't hurt to call and ask the doc if you should come in, right? Or is that not a done thing in Narnia?
48: scary! and the swiss cheese thing is so true. girl x was fascinated to learn about the cascade of errors that led to christopher lee's getting shot on the set of the crow. we decided the director deserved the most flak grief for continuing to film a shooting scene when the munitions director had gone home for the night.
that's one of the billion reasons why it was annoying that my step-dad used to fire the SKS into phone books in the basement, when the floors/ceilings are just wood. setting a bad example, gun-safety wise! one of the high hundred millions, though. I had a true horror movie moment on the phone from new york to my mom when she told me what all the apparent small-arms fire in the background was. "WHAT FLOOR IS MY SISTER ON?! WHAT FLOOR IS SHE ON?" also, "why the fuck are you in the kitchen?" "I'm just getting a cup of tea." my mom is unflappable. I think it is a testament to the workings of stockholm syndrome that even though I was afraid my sister might get shot, it didn't occur to me to call the MD cops at all. like, it just only occurred to me for the first time NOW.
and what is my immediate thought then? I could have done so much better. I fucking suck at life. someone who actually cared about their baby sister would have called the cops. seriously, is something fucking wrong with me, or what? fuck.
stockholm syndrome and stop snitchin':together at last.
Al, the only way to handle that stuff is to understand that the past is fixed. You could NOT have acted any other way. You (each of us, the generic you) can only make choices in the now. "Yesterday's dead and tomorrow is blind..."
Unless the kindly Kent family found you in a rocket ship crashed in their corn field, how about cutting yourself some slack for being not being perfectly resistant to an adult's sadism.
thanks biohazard. I know this, but it's almost more appealing to have had (imaginary, obvs) super-powers but been a fuck-up than to have been totally, helplessly at the mercy of crazy sadists. my husband doesn't see the appeal here at all. he thinks I should prefer the version of the story in which my hapless self just gets fucked with for 18 years, nothing is really my fault, and then I am crazy for some time, but on the whole get my act together...and, win! I am...resistant to this construction. now I am imagining the humorous results of the kindly kent family having been abusive alcoholics.
escapades like this were also why it seemed like a reasonably sound idea to stage a gun cleaning accident. god help us if he got the gun away, though, right? we might have gone for it if the magic of the intertubes and CSI had helped us learn more about forensics. or, perhaps, been even less likely. but it was our general understanding that cops (though base, evil creatures themselves) had a poor opinion of child-abusing lowlives, and weren't really likely to give too much thought to how a guy known to be firing live rounds in the fucking house for a joke anyway came to be lacking so much of the top of his head. honestly, though, mom would have known in 1 second. and it was my sister's dad! really, murder is just awkward all around. it's also funny that there didn't seem to be any middle ground between 'shut the fuck up' and 'murder him.' more, like, sad-funny, but funny. this was a realistic assessment, though. now I'm not a murderer, that's nice. maybe I'll put it on a self-esteem building worksheet: not murderer.
can't say that about everyone I know!
maybe I'll put it on a self-esteem building worksheet: not murderer.
Heh. On my google+ profile, the Bragging Rights section is: "Can fold fitted sheets. Never murdered anybody with a fixed address."
69: "now I'm not a murderer, that's nice. maybe I'll put it on a self-esteem building worksheet: not murderer."
Sure, put that in. Given the circumstances, you could easily have been considerably more messed up than you are, right? So being a not murderer, not drunk, not psychotic, not etc. is an accomplishment a fair number of people with similar backgrounds can't list on their resumes.
On the other hand, I fully realize that being all those nots can often be boring and depressing. But IMX settling for just very eccentric is better for the kids. Yours are too young to handle a parental flameout without sustaining lots of collateral damage. And yes, I still miss my motorcycle.
I think psychologically 68 totally makes sense. It's preferable to believe that you were in control of the situation and you fucked it up, rather than believe you were just helpless. In the first case, that means you still have control over the future, while in the second case maybe you'll be a helpless victim of events again?
Heh. On my google+ profile, the Bragging Rights section is: "Can fold fitted sheets. Never murdered anybody with a fixed address."
Shit. Well, I'm one for two.
FUCKING FITTED SHEETS: HOW DO THEY WORK?
|| My two recurring dreams are the one where I've flown overseas and am about to return when I remember I'm afraid of flying and the tornado dream. The tornado dream used to happen before some major life change, like moving, I think, but then when I was onto it, it decided to come when it wanted. I missed it, though it's always frightening. I just had a dream with tornado after tornado, all of them coming off a lake.
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75: you like, fold them in half lenghtwise first, and put one rounded end into the other, so they are spooned together, top and bottom. then after you fold it in thirds the curved edges are hidden by the sharp folds into thirds at the straight edges. um...a video would be better I guess. it's way easy to explain how to not murder people; I should maybe have a talk with my friend.
that sounds kind of fun yet scary, mr. smearcase.
apo linked to a youtube video of folding fitted sheets in the past. I think that I'd need someone to show me in person to get it right.
77. What if they're the kind that's elasticated all the way round?
would have called the cops
Cops aren't always a positive factor - by your account, I can well imagine that you might not have associated them with anything helpful.
80: Those people you can murder guilt-free. You're doing them a favor, really.
78: Not exactly fun, but somehow satisfying or even reassuring. Can't quite explain.
Back to childproofing, last night Alex dropped a Tootsie Pop in the toilet and then flushed it down (for once) while I reminded him not to flush. This was in Lee's bathroom that she doesn't like the kids using even though that's stupid since it's on the first floor, and I'm sure she overheard this since it was followed by Mara peeing on the floor and me hustling both kids out of there.
Do I need to explicitly tell her that there might be something fucking up the plumbing or can we wait and see whether it all works out okay? Right now she's fairly happy with things, so I'm not wanting to push the issue. The toilet is new and the pipe below it was also replaced this summer, but this is an old house and who knows?
There is a small chance the pop got wedged in there. Even if it did, a paper stick and a wad of sugar can't last long in water.
Try flush a biggish wad of TP. If it goes down fine, you're O.K. If it doesn't, maybe use the other toilet for big jobs.
That is, use the other toilet for big jobs while you wait for the water to soak through the paper stick. It can't last long in there and it certainly can't do any actual damage to the plumbing.
Thanks, Moby. I'm figuring the paper sticks dissolve pretty fast if they disintegrate while the kids are eating the lollipops, so I think I'm safe. I just needed some encouragement!
My sister's landlord, after weeks of her complaints that it wasn't working, removed an harmonica from the toilet in her apartment. Either the last tenant just lived with it or they flushed their instruments as they moved.
My sister's landlord, after weeks of her complaints that it wasn't working, removed an harmonica from the toilet in her apartment
Well, no wonder the harmonica wasn't working if it was down the toilet.
Also, "an harmonica"?
did it make a funny noise?
Twenty years later, the children are still puzzled about why the family slang for going to the toilet is "visiting Bob Dylan".
I was more trying to reassure Thorn about how much mass it takes to clog the pipe of a toilet for very long.
I decided that the toilet seat lock cover thing was bullshit, mostly because it looked so ugly.
I honest didn't realize those were supposed to be safety devices. We used them because both our kids went through phases where they were fucking fascinated by the toilets, and without locks they would try to see what sort of things would flush, or they would try to play with their bath toys in the toilet water, etc.
My sister's landlord, after weeks of her complaints that it wasn't working, removed an harmonica from the toilet in her apartment. Either the last tenant just lived with it or they flushed their instruments as they moved.
Your sister's landlord was Dave Barry?
that's a hazard too, though not as bad as you imagine, since scientists are always telling us our kitchen sinks are more infested with foul microbes than the toilets themselves. but toddlers can tip themselves over into the water and then drown with their legs sticking out the top, because they are so top-heavy they can't always get back out. this must be rare but is nightmarish to contemplate. I didn't lock the toilets, but my babies were not particularly explore-y. also, the water level in asian toilets is way lower than in the states, just barely covering the pipe opening. I have friends with children about whom I think, I would have murdered them already. every time you turn around they've climbed onto something and found a nail file, or broken a glass, or pulled the CD player on top of themselves, or whatever. just constantly "I'll eat that tack I found!" I know better than to credit my child-rearing skills; kids are really quite different from one another, starting pretty much on day 1. at least month 4.
I know that the bar where Lee worked long ago saw a pool ball or maybe even more than one go down the toilet, but that required digging out pipes and all sorts of awfulness. I think we'll be fine, and maybe now the kids will believe me that it's a bad idea to take toys or food into the bathroom. Maybe.
95: Possibly. Or maybe I'm getting old and it was something else in my sister's toilet and I confused it with Barry's account. I used to read him all the time back when he was funny.
I wouldn't sweat it thorn; sugar melts in water like nobody's business, and the lollipop stick is some weak-ass cardboard. you're allegedly able to flush cardboard tampon applicators, so...
I'm going to bed. it's weird, I told my husband that story about shooting in the house, which he kid of new, and also another more horrible story he didn't know, and I swear I almost had a fucking panic attack. it makes me so scared to tell people stuff like that. just, heart-pounding anxiety. successfully didn't blame myself for everything. yay!
and I got to tell of my minor revenge: the morning after the unpleasantness, when my step-dad was supposed to get my mom at the airport, I gor up early, methodically flushed all the aspirin and ibuprofen and alka-selzer down the toilet, along with all the remaining alcohol in the house, and then hid the empties in the outside trash under other things. then I destroyed all the coffee, drank all the OJ, and hid his car keys in a potted plant, on the shelf where he normally put them, but in the bonsai. very satisfactory.
Re: childhood disaster anecdotes, my girlfriend's father has had poor health and a deep, raspy voice all his life due to drinking lye or some other kind of cleaning solution as a child. I think he also has an unusually strong dislike for hospitals due to spending so much of his life in them, but I'm less sure of that part.
Re: the article in the original post, it reminds me of something about my time as a reporter. Every week or two the paper would run a special advertising section focused on the latest holiday or seasonal events or some general interest topic. The section would be even more advertising-heavy than the rest of the paper and would all be themed for that event, and we'd run some wire service articles but always at least a couple articles written by staff as well. For example, every spring there'd be a wedding issue and we'd find some relevant AP articles about current trends or fashions, and some lucky writer would interview a local couple that did something unconventional with the ceremony or had a really interesting story about how they met, and any businesses that advertise in that section would focus on something wedding-related, like a restaurant hyping its catering or something.
Long story short, the NYT article reminds me of that. I don't think we came right out and put prices and locations of products in our articles, but the basic idea is similar. Little to no actual news, just a list of products that you should buy or else you don't love your family enough. I mean, they say "childproofing has changed in recent years", but the news seems to be: there are new, more convenient kinds of outlet plugs you can buy if you sometimes forget to replace the usual kind; flat-screen TVs are precarious enough that you should bolt them down, just like all the other heavy stuff that kids could hurt themselves by knocking over; and baby-related products are often not designed for safety in the way you might think. That cover it?
I mean, sure, all this is good advice. Do this stuff. I plan to, when/if I have kids. I'm just saying, I'm not seeing much societal change over recent years here, nor big differences in technology, nor anything else I'd call "news".
Way late, but a specific child accident statistic that is pretty staggering is "window falls" by children in NYC. Per this report, 217* in 1976 (when a window guard law was passed) to 80 three years later to 9 in 2003.
*This sometimes gets reported as 217 fatalities, but I think that is not correct**.
**Per that link, the original program was called "Children Can't Fly", which is, well .. something. Any NYers of a sufficient age to recall the program? And a general search led to this short episode of a TV series hosted by (NMM to) Jimmy Savile discussing the problem in England.
I'm glad those guards work, because they're annoying.
