[Cari30131]

While at the mall, I’ve noticed parents pushing strollers with children who appear old enough to walk and who do not appear to have physical disabilities. I can’t imagine it’s a matter of convenience because the parent has to pack and unpack the stroller to get to their destination. Why aren’t these kids being encouraged to walk?

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Name : Cari30131, Gender : F, City : Austin, State : TX, Country : United States, 

[Ann L. Lowenstein]

Three factors may be at work here: 1) Kids are getting bigger again, and some of the children you see in strollers may be substantially younger than their size would suggest. 2) Some of them may very well be so completely spoiled rotten that, inconvenient as it is to cart a stroller around, it’s easier by far to strap little Hillary or Aidan into a wheeled conveyance than to try and get them to behave on foot. 3) A fair number of parents are so completely brainwashed by the whole ‘stranger danger’ overkill they truly believe that if Tamarind-Marie and Lancelot Henry James are allowed to walk about on their own two feet in public, they will be snatched up and abducted by a wild-eyed madman in some nanosecond of parental inattentiveness, so it’s ‘safer’ to keep pushing them in a stroller, even though they are being made fun of by their peers in the 3rd grade, and hate their parents because of it.

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[Jane]

I’ve got four kids — two 11-month-old twins, a three-year-old, and a five-year-old. (The older two are ambulatory.) When the better half and I took our kids to Niagara Falls, *all four* of them went into strollers. As you might guess, this was so none of them went into harm’s way. At the mall, you also might put your kids into strollers if there’s crowds, so you don’t get separated. (As well, children walk more slowly than adults, so they can get run over.) Some children are more prone to wandering away, so a stroller discourages this. Also, if you have a kid in a stroller as soon as they disembark from a car, you don’t have to worry about them getting run over by a car in a parking lot. Basically, keeping a kid in a stroller eases a lot of safety concerns. The alternative might be a safety harness, but I’ve heard passersby can be really hostile when they witness it. You could hold your child’s hand — but those little hands can easily slip from your big ones. It’s a risk.

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[Laurie]

I had a friend whose son had juvenile arthritis. Although he was about 7 years old, she sometimes took him in a stroller because he was unable to walk. He did not look disabled to outsiders.

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Name : Laurie, Gender : Female, Age : 56, City : Boston, State : MA, Country : United States, 

[lon]

Same reason grocery stores allow older people to use riding shopping carts.

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[Righteous Query]

Your post did not list your age but I will assume that you are younger and/or do not have children. Strollers don’t discourage walking, but they do discourage getting lost and tired. Moms and dads can and do walk longer and farther than a 5 year old. Kids get distracted, wander and sometimes trampled by others so the best way, in my opinion, to keep them contained is to push them around. Not to mention, when they fall asleep and you still have things to do, you try carrying 45 lbs of dead weight on your shoulder.

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[Anne]

Kids have shorter legs than their parents- maybe they find if hard to keep up with their on-the-go parents, which would create a tiring and stressful situation for everyone. That’s my best guess.. but they should be walking, for the exercise if nothing else.

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[Tabitha]

I know that when I was around five or six I rode in a stroller when my mom was walking a long way. Children get worn out easily and it’s more convenient to put them in a stroller when they get tired than to carry them or stop to rest.

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[Martha]

I’m the mother of three boys 11-19 and it seems to be related to some wanting to ‘overcherish’ their kids – kind of the opposite of challenging them to grow up and suffer the minor inconveniences of life. Even worse – those supermarket carts that look like a half-ton carnival ride. I see parents pushing two and sometimes three able-bodied school-aged kids along with the groceries! They seem to think they ‘owe’ their kids the ride as a sort of a treat. I tried using those things when my now 11 and 12-year olds were toddlers and I suspect that’s what it’s like to drive a semi without power steering. What’s even worse is that people with older kids would use them all up so that people with younger, lighter and less mobile-trustworthy kids didn’t even have the option.

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