PRO

By Katie Jentleson
Spring 2006

Yoking your offspring is an evolutionarily stable measure. The baby leash is a convenient buffer against child molestors, unfortunate car accidents, and the painful faceplants that are charactertistic of inexperienced pedestrians. But if you are not convinced by the argument for your child’s increased rate of survival, be convinced by this:  I don’t want to be bothered by your kid. The only thing worse than having a black cat cross my path is being cut off by an ambling, turd-packing drool factory.

The other day in Wegmans,  I couldn’t move my cart an inch without having to stop short to avoid a collision with some child on the loose. It is not a good idea to let your little girl walk backward through the grocery store—not unless she is fair game for my aisle-rage.  

Or, let’s consider another scenario. Over winter break, I spent an eleven hour plane ride sitting next to a young boy who did not engage a single toy or book the entire trip (nor did he speak English, so I couldn’t tell him what was what). He was content to exuberantly play the video game located in the seat back, throwing elbows my way the entire time while his mother slept peacefully, in what I can only assume was the willful ignorance of a tired parent. When he got really restless, he would crawl around my feet, which you can imagine I did not appreciate. But the whole unpleasant experience really climaxed after he fell asleep, when he flung his arms around me numerous times. I had to to free myself from his embrace, which was as strong as a baby koala’s, twice over the course of the trip—that kid didn’t need a leash, he needed a straitjacket.

The bottom line is that even though I like looking at your kids, I don’t want them to touch me, block my way, or do anything which requires me to be stressed out about their presence.  Hopefully, your child is well-behaved so as not to require a leash. But if he is going to act like an untrained puppy, treat him like one.

Con

We enter the world on a leash—a sturdy umbilical cord connecting us to our mother’s womb. Moments later, that leash is removed, and we become free, adorable, belly-button-bearing babies. Or at least, that’s the way nature intended it. But some parents out there choose to intervene with that beautiful process by reintroducing the leash after the cord has been cut.

If there are any child-leashers out there, here my plea: Knock it off!  Don’t put a leash on your damn baby!  Kids are too cute to be strapped into anything other than a playground swing or possibly a dentist’s chair (as was suggested to my mother by my dentist when I was nine—she, a non-leasher, dutifully declined).

“Okay smarty pants,” you sick baby leashers may be  thinking. “Then how do I keep my beloved baby from running toward speeding cars or menacing strangers?”  Well how about a little thing called holding hands?  That way, not only can you steer said child in a safe and healthy direction (yeah you bet that’s a metaphor for life), but you can also use your outing in the dangerous world as a chance to further your loving bond through physical contact.

A probing article posted on essortment.com raises another pro-leash argument: “With the rise of child abductions and sexual assaults, a potential kidnapper will find the leash an obstacle not worth the effort or risk.”  If that’s the issue, we should view the child leash less on the order of a dog leash and more akin to The Club: a tool for deterring those who wish to harm your precious belonging, whether that belonging be your ‘55 Porsche or your newly toddling child.

I do understand wanting to protect your child against leash-deterred kidnappers. But I am about as likely to slap a dog leash around my child’s wrist as I am to feed her Puppy Chow or ask her to retrieve my recently shot game fowl.  And the truth is, those kidnappers are only keeping off the leashed babies because they don’t want to bother stealing a kid with who’s going to grow up with serious issues.