As babywearing parents and carrying educators, researchers, and enthusiasts, I’m sure we all share the belief that everyone should be able to wear their baby. You only need to feel the magic of “sleepy dust” with your own baby, or see the joy of a caregiver successfully wrapping their baby for the first time to understand that this practice is important. And that a well-used carrier is much more than just another baby gear product on a registry.
But let’s face it: high quality carriers are out of the price range for many new parents.
Thanks to lending libraries, secondhand sales, and hand-me-down gifts, often the “village” surrounding the new parent will ensure that the price tag alone isn’t prohibitive.
But that’s not the only barrier.
Whether parents can afford a carrier or not, fully embracing this practice is not just an issue of economic access. It’s all about cultural access.
Being able to fully adopt babywearing as an integral component of a caregiving strategy depends on more than just access to the tool itself. It requires respect for the original cultures of carrying around the world and across human history. It requires cultural norms and policies that make carrying easily integrated into modern life. And it requires cultural attitudes and beliefs that understand carrying to be a valuable postpartum health intervention.
Respect for Babywearing’s Rich History & Culture
A culture of support around babywearing has been woven into the history of humans since the earliest records of our species. It is believed that wraps and slings to support the hands-free transport of our heavy, large-brained, unusually dependent human babies was one of the factors supporting the success of early hominids.
Globally, the tools used to carry babies have taken on different variations in function, aesthetics, and cultural meaning depending on the local environmental and cultural context. These tools have been passed down for generations, maintaining a critical role in how humans have been able to not only survive, but to thrive, even with the energy-intensive demands of caring for a young infant.
But although babywearing is a quintessential part of being human and has a rich cultural history around the world, global oppression and imperialism has led to the attempted erasure of this practice in many contexts.
Much like breast/chestfeeding, Western science (and culture!) is now finally catching up to what indigenous communities have known all along: the practice of carrying/wearing your baby holds ample and unique benefits for both infant and parent. This has led to a resurgence of babywearing among industrialized communities. Yet as this practice pops up in new carrying trends, designs, and regulations, it often comes with either a lack of understanding of the cultural significance or the outright appropriation of the cultural importance.
Cultural Norms that Support Babywearing
As we acknowledge this harmful history of the oppression of indigenous, global majority parenting practices, it’s critical that present-day carrying is not only honoring the historical and cultural roots of babywearing, but that it is equitably accessible to the original holders of this practice. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
The immediate postpartum period and first year of an infant’s life – when the benefits of babywearing are most pronounced for both parent and infant – is characterized in industrialized countries by parent-infant separation, especially in the US. Even if a parent did have the cultural understanding and economic access to be able to wear their baby, the lack of mandated paid leave in the United States and lack of equitable access to either paid leave and/or babies-at-work policies make this practice inaccessible.
Understanding of Carrying as an Essential Postpartum Health Intervention
Our research has shown that babywearing is not a “nice to have” or even just a smart parenting hack to facilitate cry-free trips to Target. This practice is a necessity for the health of both parent and baby.
The randomized controlled trial conducted by myself and colleagues at Nurturely, Healthy Start San Diego, and our academic collaborators, showed that babywearing reduces symptoms of postpartum depression, one of the most common complications of childbirth around the world. We have also published research showing that babywearing increases lactation. Given that most parents want to feed their baby human milk, yet the majority of parents are forced to stop breast/chestfeeding earlier than desired, this is an important intervention to improve the health of both infant and the lactating parent.
Take Action
#CarryABabyChangeTheWorld is one of our favorite hashtags that we created at Nurturely.
We are embodying this mantra by using research, education, and cultural change to ensure all caregivers have access to the science (and magic!) of wearing your baby. This includes a culturally-rooted self-paced infant carrying course for healthcare providers and community health practitioners. At the Nurturely Lounge in Eugene, Oregon, we provide free carrying consults as well as fun programs that introduce carrying to our multicultural community in an inclusive way, including our bilingual Babywearing y Bailando meetup. We also help community leaders set up free or low-cost carrier rental programs in their community with our CarrierX exchange program. And we are continuing to conduct research to document the ways that carrying can help close racial equity gaps in postpartum health.
Do you believe carrying a baby can change the world? Join our December donation campaign to spread the babywearing love and help Nurturely make this practice accessible to all families.
Click here to donate now to our Carry a Baby Change the World Impact Campaign and help make a direct impact on families through equitable access to babywearing research, education, and cultural support. The first 50 donors receive a free, beautifully illustrated children’s book on carrying by Annette McKinney called On Mama’s Back.
Can’t donate right now? Help us spread the word and share our campaign across social media, text and email platforms! Click here for easy shareable graphics and info.
Thank you for helping carry our mission forward and for introducing Nurturely to your network of friends, family, neighbors and beyond!