If you will recall, after seeing one too many "Ooh, look! New gadget!" blog posts about the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System last year, I decided to investigate. At first, I was satisfied to find that not only was the BabyPlus not new, it's been around for twenty years. But I went further, and Daddy Types reported what no one in twenty years of What'll They Think Of Next? journalism had ever noticed: the entire BabyPlus enterprise is a deceptive, unscientific house of cards.
And each of those cards is actually made from vacuum-formed bullshit:
So given all that, why the hell is BabyPlus being sold as "Safety 1st BabyPlus" by Dorel Juvenile Group, one of the two largest companies in the entire Baby Industrial Complex?
Why is Dorel attaching their name--and one of their most prominent brands, Safety 1st--to a product DT has shown to be a carefully constructed artifice of misleading, manipulative nonsense? When did this relationship start, and what's Dorel and Safety 1st's role in endorsing BabyPlus's dubious claims?
BabyPlus is sold on BabiesRUs' website as the "Safety 1st BabyPlus." Safety 1st sells it on their own website as simply "BabyPlus® Prenatal Education System™"
It's sold on Amazon as "Baby Plus", a "product by Dorel Juvenile Group." But in another listing, it's sold as BabyPlus [no space] "product by The BabyPlus Company."
The claims that Safety 1st uses to sell the BabyPlus are worth noting, if only for their utter subjectivity and untestability:
A progressive development tool that gets results.Better, more interactive, more relaxed, earlier, and greater than what? than who? [1] What basis do parents-to-be--or as the Industry calls them, First-Time Expectants--have for judging these kinds of awesome-sounding-but-completely-unsubstantiated claims?Babies at birth and infancy
· Develop better sleep patterns
· More readily nurse
· Have increased ability to self-soothe
· Are more interactive and responsive
· Are more relaxed and alert at birthAnd later in life, these children demonstrate
· Earlier developmental milestones
· Improved school readiness and intellectual abilities
· Greater curiosity and independence
· Longer attention spans
When I started my investigative crusade against BabyPlus last year, I just figured exposing it was an entertaining diversion. BabyPlus was an outlier, an isolated example of one crazy, unaccountable huckster in Seattle who's made a twenty year career peddling the most outrageous bullshit marketing that new parents are subjected to, the kind of stuff that pushes every insecurity and aspirational button a First-Time Expectant has. So someone is gullible enough to drop $150 and strap a piece of superstitious, nonsensical junk around her belly for a few hours? Where's the harm?
But since then, the involvement of Mothers Work, the biggest maternity store company in the country, and now Dorel, the largest baby gear company in the world, changes the game. These companies are on the hook for BabyPlus's manipulations and deceits, in large part because they fit perfectly into the companies' core business model, which is to sell as much stuff as they possibly can to First-Time Expectants, even if that means teaming up with a complete quack to make completely unverifiable claims to sell completely useless products.
[1] Don't email me to tell me your BabyPlus baby already knew it's really "than whom?" and she's just six months old! I eschewed the proper construct to make a colloquialism-inflected rhetorical point.
So, interesting, his current bio page totally changes his creds: http://www.babyplus.com/drbrentlogan.php vs. your 2007 entry (http://daddytypes.com/2007/09/27/is_babyplus_inventor_a_doctor_it_goes_without_saying.php)
Awesome! My favorite Daddy Types series continues! I'd love to hear what Dorel has to say about this.
I'll be sure to post their reply when/if they get back to me.
What will they think of next? The Sperm Education System?
I just hope the straps don't use Velcro, if you know what I mean.
Ugh I was one of the suckers who bought this, used it once, was mocked by my family, packed it away and resold it at a 50% loss. Definitely one of my more embarrassing moments of motherhood.
Must... control... fist of rage.
I've dropped out of two new parent groups already because I couldn't stand the hyper-competitive "Oh yeah? Well, my kid can stand on her head and fart out "Dixie," so I must be awesome" thing. Now I know, if only I had tied on an overpriced walkman and clapped my hands until Tinkerbell rose from the freaking DEAD, then I'd have been just fine.
I'd get a kick out of a Penn & Teller show on this doodad, I really would.