Because I'm not a parent, I'm often surprised -- and shocked -- to learn about the innumerable ways that government bureaucracy invades the lives of people who decided (probably in moments of weakness) to have children.

I made it through childhood without ever having been strapped into a car seat. While I do recall the advent of seat belts (which I was told to use by my parents), the government did little more than make friendly recommendations -- the "BUCKLE UP FOR SAFETY" campaign being one of them. Eventually the state governments got involved, and more recently, the federal nanny state, in the form of Nanny-in-Chief Hillary Clinton (link via Common Sense & Wonder). Wearing a seat belt used to be common sense; now it's a primary offense not to wear one.

Over the years, I gradually got used to the fact that not wearing a seat belt was a crime. But car seats for children didn't really concern me in a major way. However, on more than one occasion, the spectacle of watching as my less-than-free friends struggled to forcibly strap their ever-larger brats into torturous plastic pods from Taiwan made me thankful. At least I didn't have to do THAT! I once remarked that my dad never did that to me, and I was instantly told that it was illegal not to do it! (Busybody me! I should have kept my trap shut.)

Well, I thought, when they're babies, I guess that ordeal is a small price to pay.

(If you're dumb enough to have 'em! Hee hee.)

But a couple of days ago I was told one of those things that just wormed its way inside my head and won't leave me alone until I expel it into this blog. It's an ugly, ugly factoid which shocked me (and which I should have known about) but which will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has children.

Child car seats are now mandatory until the age of eight!

EIGHT!

My God, when I was eight I was playing war games with toy guns, and running around doing all kinds of risky things. My father, although quite a disciplinarian, would never have humiliated me by strapping me into a car seat. Never! He's not alive, so I can't ask him whether he would have risked jail to preserve my dignity, but this is just crazy stuff which reminds me of Joan Crawford abusing her son Christopher by strapping him into bed. Strapping an eight year old into a car seat is just plain stupid. It fosters cowardice, and is bad training for life.

Moreover, according to that bastion of right wing libertarianism known as the New York Times Magazine, car seats for older children do nothing to increase the safety factor:

....are car seats the answer? Recently back in America for vacation, we encountered a fierce debate among concerned parents in reaction to a recent New York Times Magazine article. Written by two well-respected economists, the piece claims that “in recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seatbelts in saving the lives of children older than two. In certain kinds of crashes – rear-enders, for instance – car seats actually perform worse.” The economists analyzed a large amount of data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which has kept police reports on fatal crashes since 1975. They also commissioned their own crash test, using two different size dummies (3 and 6 years-old) in seatbelts and car seats – and found similar results. The authors concluded that the best use of car seats was keeping kids in the back versus the front seat and, “perhaps there is a different contraption that could help accomplish the same goal for roughly the same price: a back-seat DVD player.”

While I really ought to be ashamed of my ignorance of the law, it turns out that in the state where I spend most of my time, eight year olds have been forcibly strapped since 2002. According to one author, child seats even cause SUVs!

Previously, the law required child safety car seats only for children under the age of four. Doubling the age requirement has caused many complications, none of which seems to have been taken into consideration by the since-departed Gov. Schweiker, or by the state legislature. For starters, no seven year-old is going to go quietly back to a car seat he thinks he outgrew when he was a toddler. So what are parents to do, physically force their flailing, screaming children into the seats, in full view of a parking lot full of people who might report them to the spanking police?

It was relatively easy for parents to obey the old car seat law, because they're always with their two and three year-olds, so they could make sure the seats were always there for them. Once their kids are old enough to go to school and play tee-ball, however, logistical problems arise. What if a boy's mother usually picks him up from school, but one day, an emergency prevents her from showing up, so she calls her husband at work? Making it to the school isn't a problem for him, but the new law is, because the child seat is in his wife's car. In order to assure compliance, the couple will have to buy one seat for every child under eight, then multiply that by the number of vehicles they own. Even then, it would be illegal for them to adapt to other unexpected situations, like giving rides to any of their kids' friends.

The revised law will place a terrible burden on large families that have quite enough worries already. Since expanding the age range also expands the number of seats needed, it will not be unheard of for families to require five child safety seats in the same vehicle. Where will they put them? You're not allowed to use one in the front seat, because the federally mandated safety air bags might kill the child. You can probably only put two in the back, because most seats' installation requires the presence of shoulder straps, and the middle seat will usually only have a lap belt. A third row of seating will allow two more child seats. So where do you put the fifth child?

Even in a family with only three kids, there's a good chance that all of them will be under eight years old at the same time. This will increase the need for those dastardly, planet-destroying SUVs.

....child car seats [] also drive the purchase of ever larger cars by families. A family with three kids can't travel by Volkswagen bug any more.

Considering the fact that these laws don't make the kids any safer, unless I knew better I'd almost think the goal was to condition kids to be placed in restraints -- while simultaneously discouraging people from having children.

Couldn't both goals be more easily achieved by simply encouraging the spaying of girls and castration of boys by responsible parents -- as we do responsible pet owners?

Everyone would be safer, the crime rate would drop (statistics show that 95% of crime is committed by unneutered males) and think of the decrease in wear and tear on the environment!

(And after all, the program wouldn't have to be mandatory.)