Tuesday, May 22, 2012

If worrying about safety is the new American religion, then the French are atheists

Where in the world do children wear helmets to ride their bikes on the sidewalk, but adults driving 70 mph on a motorcycle have bare heads?

If you guessed the United States, 10 points for you! Americans are obsessed with safety. They attempt to protect people from the minutest chance of harm, but then they do things that are incredibly stupid and dangerous--like insist on their "right" not to wear a motorcycle helmet. Children going on a school trip to the zoo often have to produce signed legal waivers before they can participate. American parenting magazines anticipate the remotest possibility of harm that could befall your child.

For example, last summer I browsed through an article advising parents to always turn their childrens' sleepers inside-out before washing, because your child's hair could collect in the foot area and get tangled up around a toe and cut off circulation and cause the toe to need amputation. This came complete with a parent's first-hand account of this happening and how they had to rush their child to the emergency room to remove the strangulating strand of hair.

Last week, when I was bringing the 3 kids to France on my own, I had two very bizarre and frustrating encounters with the American obsession over safety.


Anecdote #1: I was in the airport waiting for our first flight to depart. I had a 20-hour journey ahead of me, with 2 airport connections and 3 flights before we arrived. So my primary goal was to get the kids' energy out before we got on the plane. We were in a quiet, mostly empty part of the airport, so I let the kids go back and forth on the moving sidewalks until we boarded. At the next airport, we did the same thing until a security guard came over. "Ma'am, I don't want your children going on the moving sidewalks. They're very dangerous and your children could get their fingers pinched or cut off."

"But I'm about to get on a trans-Atlantic flight with 3 little kids. They need to get their energy out before they're cooped up on the plane."

"I'm sorry, but it's just too dangerous and I don't want to be the one having to call the ambulance if your child gets a finger torn off. Then you'll miss the flight and you'll have to stay overnight in the hospital and no one will be happy. We even had an old lady die in an escalator not too long ago when she fell and her collar got tangled in mechanism. One slip and it's too late. Now, it's your choice to let them play on the moving walkways, but I don't want to be the one calling 911."

After he totally spoiled our fun, we had to find some other form of amusement. We watched airplanes out a big window, slid down a small ramp at the bottom of the windowpanes, and shared toys with a family from (my guess) somewhere in eastern Europe.

Anecdote #2: About halfway through the trans-Atlantic flight, I finally got all three kids asleep. Inga was in a bassinet that clipped into the bulkhead in front of us. Zari and Dio were sleeping on the floor by my feet, curled up with their little red airplane blankets. A flight attended came over and angrily told me that I could not let my children sleep on the floor. "You have to get them off the floor right now! It's too dangerous!"

"But if I move them, they will wake up and start screaming, and then everyone will be miserable."

"I'm sorry, but they cannot be on the floor. If we hit a patch of turbulence, they could fly up and break their necks and die."

So I hauled two no-longer-sleeping children off the floor and buckled them into their seats.

Then as soon as I landed in France, I was reminded how differently they think about safety. On our first day, we were invited to someone's house for lunch. (Incredible food, by the way, though fairly quotidian by French standards.) Our hosts live high up in the hills above Nice, and there's no way to get there via public transportation. So they said, "We'll drive you! Hop in the car." They took me and Inga first and then came back for Eric and the other two children. No car seats, mind you. I buckled Inga in with a lap belt, praying that we didn't get in an accident.

On the way home, they wanted to avoid shuttling us in shifts, so they piled all of us into a tiny car and off we went down the hairpin turns. Eric sat shotgun and I was in the back with all 3 kids. We had to double some of them up in the seatbelts because this was a small 5-passenger car with 6 people in it. What struck me was the total nonchalance from all the French people around me at driving an overcrowded car, full of kids, with no car seats.

At one point during our lunchtime conversation, the topic of wearing helmets came up. I told them how in the States, all the kids wear bike helmets but none of the motorcyclists do. This is pretty much the polar opposite of France. Here in France, you don't wear a bike helmet unless you're an adult and a serious cyclist. But everyone wears a full helmet when they ride a motorcycle.

I just finished reading Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. I highlighted the following passage (about how French women don't usually avoid certain foods during pregnancy, such as soft cheeses or raw meat): "The point in France isn't that anything goes. It's that women should be calm and sensible. Unlike me, the French mothers I meet distinguish between the things that are almost definitely damaging and those that are dangerous only if they're contaminated."

Give me the French approach to danger any day, where people take precautions for things that are actually dangerous (like crazy motorcyclists who often go 160+ kilometers per hour while weaving in and out of traffic) rather than fretting about minute possibilities of harm (like eating unpasteurized sheep's cheese topped with a slice of raw cured ham).
Because you can never be too safe...

31 comments:

  1. Another thing that does not make sense in US. You HAVE to have a car seat when in your own car, but if you take the bus with a baby in a carrier, nobody will give up his/her seat for you, and you can ride standing without anybody blinking an eye!

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  2. OH so true... SO true!!!

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  3. if someone douses my kid with antibacterial gel again I'm gonna scream - living amongst helicopter parents has quite possibly made me crazy. You wouldn't believe the looks that I let my 10 and 12 year old go to the neighborhood park alone

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  4. LOVE THIS. I shared on the 'free range kids' page on FB. Thanks!

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  5. loved this!! it's so true. my kids eat the wood chips and dirt at the playground while other mothers scoff. BUT, my children get sick maybe once every two years. moms ask me "how are your kids SO healthy??". my response "i let them be kids and they are stronger for it!".

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  6. This is Natalie! Will there more on the book? :)

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  7. I'm glad that at least one adult in this area was wearing a helmet yesterday. One block away from my house a man was riding his motorocycle, and didn't see the car in front of him stop. He ended up laying his bike on the street and hitting the back of the car when he couldn't stop in time. He walked away from the accident with little more than intense road rash. He was lucky because he was smart.

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  8. "Safety is the new American Religion"

    In many states you could let your child suffer and even die without seeking medical help because it is your religious belief that prayer will cure your child. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an exception for "intelligent risk analysis".

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  9. I think the US has become this way because of extreme litigation; people are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for their own behavior. Burned on hot coffee from McDonalds? Sue them. Gaining weight from eating Nutella for breakfast? Sue Nutella. It's insane.

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  10. I completely agree about litigation. Nobody honks the kids will die sleeping on the airplane floor....but if they so much as broke a nail, fat American mores would sue the pants off the airlines and win.

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  11. I'm all for common sense but just wanted to comment on two things
    First, my friends French husband was very, very concerned about her eating unpasteurized cheese while she was pregnant.
    second, if you had been on a transatlantic flight where the plane dropped unexpectedly and food service carts hit the roof you would not want that to happen to any kid.

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  12. Reminds me of my first birth when the OB told me that I had to have an IV because my veins might collapse during labor. I still refused it and said my veins could collapse walking down the street, but I don't walk around with an IV.

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    1. I had a midwife birth in a hospital. I didn't have an IV and I did bleed out after giving birth to my second child. The nurse had a difficult time getting the IV in because my veins colapsed, but hey she got it in now didn't she? I saw no reason to be stuck to an IV pole for my whole labour, never needed it with my first child, also midwife delivered. I wanted to be able to move around and get comfortable without something pulling at my arm.

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  13. Yes, this is definitely related to our insane lawsuit-crazy culture, too.

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  14. Not to derail too much further from the discussion of maternal safety precautions in different societies, but a word about the perception of the U.S. as litigious: The civil justice system is one of the few places in our very unequal society where individuals can challenge large institutions like corporations and even hope to receive justice. Even so, the tort system is hardly what I would call accessible, with years to wait for resolution and, under the contingency fee arrangement, very little chance an attorney can afford to take a case without the promise of a big damages award. I would be more sympathetic to detractors of the tort system if I heard those voices calling for strengthening labor law, regulation of financial and health care systems, and all other arenas where individuals can be severely injured by powerful actors and left with little recourse.

    This is probably more information than most people want to hear, but I think it's so important that we critically evaluate the causes of problems, as tempting as it is to repeat what we've been told. Think of who is doing the telling, yes?

    And as far as the burning coffee case goes, I highly recommend the documentary "Hot Coffee" (see trailer at http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/default.asp?pg=thefilm) for an explanation of what happened to the plaintiff in that case, and several others, and an explanation of the civil justice system.

    Sorry about your experiences flying, Rixa. It's hard to imagine the time when plane travel was glamorous and fun - I have a few vague memories from my long-ago childhood...

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  15. I think the statement that in the U.S. "no one" wears motorcycle helmets is something of an overstatement. It's legal to go helmetless in my state, but you still see plenty of bikers with helmets -- probably still the majority.

    Also, the thing about the kids lying on the floor and then hitting turbulence -- as long as they're not strapped in, which they don't have to be, what's the difference whether they're on the floor or in a seat? They can still get thrown around.

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  16. @nsv - I was going to bring up the HOt Coffee documentary myself! There is a lot of misunderstanding about what happened in that case. I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits, but we need them in the US because we have no regulations to protect us from corporations.

    But I agree with the larger point in Rixa's post about American hovering/ control-freakiness when it comes to other people's kids. (For example, a friend left her ill son in a car - strapped in the carseat - on a cool day for 5 minutes; she had only been gone 2 minutes when someone called the police.) And at the same time there is no social support for families - policing, without support. It's depressing.

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  17. I have two boys and when I was pregnant with both of them, I was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you have to do and have to avoid. How does anyone remember all of that? I craved sashimi pretty bad with my first and finally tried to find out why I shouldn't have it. When I found out why and the actual risks of getting Listeria, I decided I would take my chances, especially since the risk of having a miscarriage from getting Listeria is about 1000x less than from getting an amnio. It seems as though in America if an "expert" tells us we should or should not do something, we accept it, without finding out for ourselves what the actual risks are. Thus things that are relatively safe become horribly risky, and if we don't do the things we're supposed to do, we get the guilt.

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    1. I thought it was hillarious that they started telling us we can't eat peanut products because it may cause a peanut allergy in the baby. I ate a PB&J every night before bed from the 4th month on. I had started waking up starving in the middle of the night and it seemed a healtheir option than shoving cookies into my face at 4am. And guess what? Neither of my kids have any food allergies. One is allergic to laytex, go figure.

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  18. Interesting. I'm in Germany right now (with the military) and the children always wear bike helmets, but the adults rarely do. Most, but not all of the streets in the city have designated raised bike paths next to the sidewalks.

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  19. Here it's law to have helmets on motorbikes. I thought it was all over the country. weird. But we have a lot of those sorts of laws the closer to DC you are.

    For the record (though I am against kid helmets being a law) it makes more sense to make a law protecting kids who cannot make judgements like that for themselves, than it does for an adult who should be able to decide for themselves if they want the risk of their head exploding on asphalt in the incidence of a wreck. Same goes with seatbelts.

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  20. We put bike helmets on our kids in large part because we want them to be in the habit of always wearing them. I don't disagree with your sentiments, but a toddler crawling around the driveway on a tricycle will someday be a 10-year-old on the street on a bike. And if our kids someday to be motorcycle riders (gasp), I would hope that the helmet habit would carry forward there as well.

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  21. I think helmets make sense: they aren't cumbersome, and protect kids from TBI. But I agree that the obsession with safety is strange here. This reminds of me of the blog freerangekids.com, where she advocated for a "take your kids to the park and leave them there" day. People freaked out and thought she was setting kids up for all kinds of abductions and molestations. It's a great blog! My kids are free range.

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  22. It bothers me that many times I worry not about my children's actual safety but someone else calling the police on me because they deem something I do dangerous. I had someone call the police one day when I had my kid sleeping in the van in the driveway and he woke up and was crying. When I asked why she didn't just ring my doorbell to tell me, she proceeded to tell me what a horrible person I was. Fun.

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  23. It bothers me that many times I worry not about my children's actual safety but someone else calling the police on me because they deem something I do dangerous. I had someone call the police one day when I had my kid sleeping in the van in the driveway and he woke up and was crying. When I asked why she didn't just ring my doorbell to tell me, she proceeded to tell me what a horrible person I was. Fun.

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  24. When my oldest was 6 or 7, he went head first over the handlebar of his bike and hit the asphalt. His helmet had a huge crack. I was sure glad I had instilled in him the habit to always wear a helmet on the bike. I also insisted that my husband wear a helmet whenever he rode his bike to school/work. He was hit by a car once, again, huge crack on his helmet. Glad it was on his head. Do we need triclosan in our soap? Or toothpaste? Probably not. Do toddlers need helmets to prevent them hitting their heads on the table? Well, probably not. Yes, Americans certainly are obsessed with safety. However, bike helmets absolutely make sense. And proper restraint in the car lowers mortality rates in accidents by 70%. I won't allow antibacterial this and that in my house, and I'll let my kids play in the dirt, but I'll continue to make them wear helmets when on the bike, and I'll continue to buckle them properly. It's what makes sense to me.

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  25. I enjoy reading your blog and I never comment, but, I'm sorry, I just HAD to today. Your anecdote #2 has nothing to do with American safety, but more airline regulations. I have lived overseas almost all of my child-rearing years. I have had this same thing happen on a flight from Paris-Dubai, Hong Kong-Beijing, Frankfurt-Delhi. The one time that my children did get to sleep peacefully on the floor was a flight from San Francisco (America)to Tokyo. I in some part agree that America can be over the top with safety at times. But I have also lived in MANY countries that would make America seem like downright daredevils. Sure, compare France and America and see what you get. But that seems like a very small sample to make such a bold statement as you did. Want safety freaks? Live in Japan, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, or Switzerland for a few years.

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  26. In California you must (by law) wear a helmet on a motorcycle.

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  27. In California you must (by law) wear a helmet on a motorcycle.

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  28. I just wanted to say a couple things....on the plane, where do they tell you to put your child (under 2) if you are going to crash? On the floor.
    There ARE places in the States where it is law to wear a motorcycle helmet. It should be everywhere though. Recently in NY, a man on a protest to keep the no-helmet law had a crash and was killed. Duh.
    Buses are a totally different breed of vehicle--usually travelling at slower (city) speeds, and are so large that occupents are more protected, and statistically car-bus crashes are less common than car-car crashes.
    Triclosan is in toothpaste because gingivitis is shown to be connected with premature births and heart disease.

    Yes, Americans seem overly concerned about safety sometimes. But there also seems to be a lot of "stupid" people in the States. What are the statistics for car crashes in France? Other European countries are quite advanced when it comes to protecting children in cars. Why do you think they have this cavalier attitude towards safety? I remember being in Jamaica and fearing for my life on the roads--it was crazy!. Then there was a large, fatal, accident, and people were just "Oh well, that's life". I can't believe that the French love their children any less, or would be less upset than American if they were killed. So why do they not appear to care about their safety? I've often wondered how I'd deal with the situation you were in (we travel very little though!). I just don't know that I could intentionally put my children in an unsafe situation. And I'm definately not a helicoptor parent, but car safety is important to me.

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    1. To be fair, I don't think that all or even most French people go around without carseats! But the contrast between my experiences in the airport and then my first day in France just struck me as so odd.

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