Stick to the basics otherwise pram envy
A WEIRD thing happens to parents when they go pram shopping. They start out with a perfectly rational outlook, set budget and vague idea of whether they need a detachable car seat or not.
But within seconds of setting foot in Mothercare, they fall into a semi-hypnotic state, a vacant mist clouding over their gaze, which in extreme cases makes their eyes spin like that snake in the Jungle Book.
Suddenly, having idly planned to opt for something mid-range and value-for-money, they are bewitched. By contemporary Scandinavian curves and sheepskin lining. By detachable carriages and polished chrome chassis. And by the promise of something that once seemed impossible, the Everlasting Gobstopper of pushchair features: a one-hand fold mechanism.
Even those who consider themselves hardened to the marketeers, and above all that nonsense, fall prey.
It’s exactly the same phenomenon as when someone walks into a car showroom with a ‘fixed budget’ (ha!) and comes out with a BMW. The pram manufacturers know this full well, and, if proof were needed, you only have to consider that Silver Cross has actually created a model called the ‘Aston Martin Fold Surf’. How gullible do they think we are exactly? Whatever the answer to that question, I’m fairly sure they’re right. This phenomenon was highlighted last week when one mum from Cornwall, Gylisa Jane, hit out
at ‘pram snobbery’ on a Facebook post, slamming parents who spent a fortune on flashy pushchairs. She said: ‘There’s a secret pram world. People look at what pram you have – it’s a status thing.’
She’s right in some ways, although my motivation to buy a flashy new pushchair when my kids were little honestly wasn’t status – not least because the pram turned out to cost more than the car I was driving round in.
It’s a completely illogical desire to get something that’s the height of shiny loveliness for your new baby… even though you KNOW you could be pushing them around in a shopping trolley and they wouldn’t know any different. (In fact, my eldest was at his most contented when propped up in a plastic baby seat in Tesco.)
But she’s right when she says this makes no sense. None at all. Having had three kids and innumerable pushchairs and prams between them I can honestly say that the cheapest one turned out to last the longest. It’d cost about £59 in 2005 and saw so much action over the years that it looked like it’d done a tour of duty in Afghanistan by the time I finally chucked it out. Which, by some definitions, made it our dream model.
Summer Nights at the Moonlight Hotel by Jane Costello is out now, priced £7.99