Discuss
Given how discouraged world facing is, how come it’s all I see in the real world?
An almost every post about world facing here that I see, it’s mentioned that world facing is never necessary and almost discouraged - back wearing being the better alternative.
However, whenever I see a baby worn “in the wild”, all I see is world facing babies (mostly on dads :) since they’re usually stronger I guess). If I haven’t discovered this sub and did research, I’d think world facing is the default baby wearing position.
Most people aren’t in these groups so they don’t see that’s it’s not ergonomic. It’s advertised as a way to wear it so people do. Unfortunately most manuals I see don’t mention anything about not using it for extended time, if they’re sleeping, etc.
Popular culture — eg movies like Hangover normalized wearing your baby that way.
Carrier availability. Brands that promote world-facing like Ergobaby have the largest visibility in baby stores.
Parent demand. How many times do we read here that parents want to world-face their baby because the baby is unhappy in the carrier? Market research would point to promoting world-facing as a solution to maximize sales (even if their poorly designed carrier was responsible for this in the first place).
Trust in brands to “do the right thing” or existence of government supervision. People assume that the way a product is marketed is always ethical. Or that babywearing products are regulated to the same extent as other products like cribs and car seats. Joke’s on us, because the overwatch are organizations like The Int’l Hip Dysplasia Institute who are pay to win and there isn’t much government oversight on carriers. In fact, brand marketers don’t even know how to use their own products.
Also, not to stereotype, but some men can be wuss about babywearing looking too effeminate. World-facing looks cooler, especially since men are often shown world facing in media.
Climb into a seat contraption with no stirrups, let your legs dangle, and just hang by your crotch for a few minutes to hours. I imagine we’d all feel pretty uncomfortable. That’s pretty much what the baby bjorn carrier does.
Not the person you asked, but from what I've seen, it is difficult to get a good fit - it doesn't support a good M shape and just lets the legs dangle. I also feel like the arm holes are awkward and prevent baby from putting their hands up for comfort.
Baby Bjorn makes several carriers-- they aren't all the same and most of the newer ones do not have baby in a crotch dangling position. The Mini is bad unless you have a fresh newborn, and the older Baby Bjorn Original is terrible.
Yeah, there are a metric ton of those floating around and they're always dirt cheap, I'm sure that's why they're still being used. 'Free' or '$10' really appeals to people.
Also adding that SSCs in general don’t give a pronounced M. If you put one hand on a knee and the other on the bottom and your knee hand is higher than you’re good 👍 instructions tend to depict a pronounced M but if you look at the actual real world photo of the carrier, the M is much more subtle usually
I love the lark! I’ve seen H&P get slack for the “lack of M shape” and compared it with the box for ergo baby which also has a less pronounced M as the photo on the package. It’s essentially the trade off for the convenience of a buckle carrier versus the moldable freedom of a ring sling or wrap but still appropriate for hip development
Lack of babywearing education, carrier brands marketing the position, people seeing other people babywearing poorly so they assume it’s fine and copy it (including brands and influencers perpetuating it online), etc.
I think a lot of parents have the misconception that babywearing is inherently safe because baby is strapped to your body, but that’s obviously not true. Injuries and deaths have happened with carrier misuse.
It’s the same reason why some people question why a 2+ year old is still rear facing in the car. I’ve had strangers tell me my kids would be happier world facing. Jokes on them because they both had anterior placentas and are contact nappers and if they weren’t in a carrier, they’d be stuck on me like a koala.
I’m no expert, but I was told by my postpartum nurses that they could always tell that a newborn was in with an anterior placenta because they snuggle up to mom like they did with the placenta, face smashed in.
Yeah I had a posterior placenta and my baby loves sleeping with his face smushed into my shoulder/chest, I just assumed that was normal baby comfort behavior.
My baby didn’t have an anterior placenta and loves to smoosh his face into me. I always need to turn his head so I can see his little nose! I think maybe all babies or many babies behave this way.
So interesting! I can see how it would make sense. Mine is 6 months and mostly contact napping still, and a lot of the time he seems to be trying to bury back in there by smashing his face into my shoulder/face.
I live in Switzerland, every baby is in a snowsuit in a carrier or if they’re in a stroller 9 times out of 10 it’s a car seat covered in blankets and pram suit. I always cringe thinking of the poor overheating babies. It’s 15 degrees Celsius right now and this is all I’m seeing. I imagine people look at my kid and think he must be freezing 😂
Ah, in the northeastern US, it’s kind of the opposite where people are so afraid of babies overheating, they’re often underdressed, and I worry about frost bite in -15 degrees C.
My husband still tries to wear our 20mo world-facing (I insist on her facing in and end up wearing her on my back).
I think he just doesn’t buy the argument that it’s bad for them or uncomfortable. Our daughter is pretty good at communicating discomfort so he believes she’ll let him know if she’s uncomfortable.
I can’t say I disagree with this. I just also know she truly does not mind facing in and is likely more comfortable this way, so why risk it? Also at her size, it’s more comfortable for me to have her limbs closer to my body. I don’t see the benefit for world facing anymore but I also think people make it a way bigger deal than it needs to be.
I’ll also say that our daughter went through a period of really not wanting to be worn facing in — could have been a fit issue or just wanting to look around more, but we were new at it and didn’t know better. Most of the babies I see facing out are smaller and I feel for the parents that are trying their best to help their baby feel happy. At the end of the day that’s what we’re all trying to do.
This is my first argument every time he tries to wear her like that. He claims no but I’m guessing he doesn’t wear her for long. I can barely wear her on my front anymore (facing in) cause she’s getting bigger, though she’s definitely small for her age ~10th percentile. I think that’s just what he got used to and defaults to it.
You can’t do forward facing in a piece of $20 bedsheet. You need a highly structured carrier with lots of padding and straps and adjustments that ~Only this special company can sell because they are special and American and so much better than what people have been doing for millenia~
There is a place for SSCs, but a securely tighter 3 meter piece of woven cloth is the most supportive carry you can get, but there’s only so much marketing to be done there.
But also. babies do like to look out. And while you can do that with a back or side carry meh dais, ring slings, onbuhimos, wraps, etc, those are intimidating. They’re trying to sell that you can buy a replacement for cultural knowledge on babywearing.
“They are trying to sell that you can buy a replacement for cultural knowledge on babywearing” omg this is the truest thing I’ve ever read on Reddit!!! I feel exactly this way too when I see a post by someone who has like 7 carriers and wants advice on what new carrier to buy that will somehow magically solve their wearing problems. When the fact is, no carrier will be as comfortable, for caregiver and baby, as truly putting in the work to learning how to use a woven wrap well. And even if they don’t want to learn to wrap, even just paying to meet with a babywearing consultant to learn how to better use the carriers they have would be a much better use of money than yet another carrier. And I’m not saying people can’t buy more carriers if they want to for fun - just that there becomes a point where if you are having issues, experience and skill matters more - and it is so sad to me that we’ve lost this cultural knowledge in the US where I am.
You can’t do forward facing in a piece of $20 bedsheet.
I've seen my fair share of stretchy and woven wrap forward facing and even ringslings and mehdais.... There's are some wild YouTube tutorials out there. Most of them 10+ years old.
The official one is called a kangaroo carry and is a carry assist and really only practical around 5 months when baby has the core strength to protect their airway but still okay with legs being scrunched. This is the best photo I could find from a quick google search and is one of the things I put in the “possible, but not practical” category
Because people never do any research and they just jump into baby wearing without understanding safety. AND I truly believe companies are slimy - they mass sell products to parents that aren’t safe and don’t fully explain safe baby wearing. And I’m guilty of unsafe baby wearing before I understood the safety and got deeper into it as well. But I learned because I searched out the information because it’s just who I am. Not everyone does that.
Overall - I also see SOOOO many unsafe baby wearing - especially in carriers. Low on the chest, to loose or wearing babies to young. Heart attack.
Saw a newborn in the zoo. Wasn't much older than 6-8 weeks. World facing, asleep... Parents pushed an empty pram... I gasped but they left, we entered. I didn't say anything. I just stopped walking and stared into the abyss when though they had passed me already. I still think about this baby when the discussion of world facing comes up.
The thing that gets me with small babies world facing (aside from the obvious safety issues) is that they literally can’t see very far away so why are you even bothering? I’ve always held my babies facing me when they’re that young so why would I put them in a carrier facing away?
Some lack research, some lack knowledge, some don't care. I've seen infant bucket seats in cars installed forward facing. Nowhere in any instructions should that be possible but people do it. "my baby wanted to see me while I'm driving" (your baby can't see you even if they're forward facing) or "the feet touched the back seat it was uncomfortable" (no it wasn't) are some of the excuses. And no matter how you approach it or phrase it - they always feel attacked.
It’s a negative feedback loop on socials too because any response trying to educate from a safety aspect, no matter how gentle, gets dog piled on from random others of “stop momshamming, she knows her baby, we did much worse and our kids are alive, blah blah blah” and that engagement pushes the unsafe content out more since the algorithms don’t parse out positive vs negative 🙃
A lot of people seem to think their babies can see and want to look around a that age. I remember thinking my kiddo was looking around too, but now looking back he was obviously so freakin' blind. Like I watch older videos and you can absolutely tell his eyes aren't focused and can't track anything.
I am not a baby wearing expert but am a child development person and kind of believe it overwhelms the baby into being pacified. Imagine how overwhelming the entire new world coming at you chest level would be. Then we hear "they only like world facing" instead of working through the kinks of a comfy hold. I see world facing all the time and the baby always seems totally zoned out as opposed to engaged.
Because most people do whatever the carrier company says they can, and they think its good for babies to look out the whole time. A lot of people don't even read the instructions or safety precautions, let alone researching beyond the insert.
It might depend on where you live. I live in pretty "crunchy conservative" area and I see a lot of baby wearing but never forward facing. A lot of woven wraps, too.
I live in a pretty rural area and have never once seen a baby in a front facing tummy to tummy carrier. Not here, not in either of the bigger cities we have to travel to. Literally only ever world facing 🙃 I did see my first back carry in the wild yesterday!
Except I don’t think forward facing is very convenient for the parent either. It seems much, much more awkward and uncomfortable than just doing a back carry!
We have the baby Bjorn Harmony, and my son is FASCINATED by everything when he is world facing. To be fair, we only put him in world facing for the grocery store. Otherwise I wore him inward and front. I didn’t feel weird about it because it wasn’t incredibly frequent. Maybe I should have.
Now I’m pregnant and can’t use a carrier with a waistband, so he’s on my back in an Onbuhimo. I found inward facing in a back carry with the Harmony incredibly awkward. The Onbuhimo is like putting a little backpack on 🤣 He gets a kick out of the swing onto my back. Our dismount is getting a little awkward the more pregnant I get… we’ll do it as long as we can, though.
I think men just like to wear world facing because it’s fun, and they might not know any better. My partner went for a walk with our baby and he fell asleep. When we went out shortly after our baby vomited a decent amount of yellow bile. This was well out of the norm for him, and we ended up at hospital with concerns of a partial obstruction or the like. After all the tests and a lot of anxiety we were sent home and it wasn’t really explained. It occurred to me later that it was probably due to the way his body slumped when sleeping in the front carry. My partner has never done the front carry since!
Idk but my baby likes it and it's safe for us because we are doing it in a safe way. I think so many things these days are overanalyzed because everyone is scared that common sense has disappeared.
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u/Much-Ad9827 Mar 11 '26
Most people aren’t in these groups so they don’t see that’s it’s not ergonomic. It’s advertised as a way to wear it so people do. Unfortunately most manuals I see don’t mention anything about not using it for extended time, if they’re sleeping, etc.