The Parenting Journal

Every year, the CPSC receives reports of children falling from chairs, step stools, and improvised climbing solutions in the kitchen. Most of those falls happen when a parent is right there, watching, distracted for two seconds by a boiling pot...

Every year, the CPSC receives reports of thousands of injuries to children under five involving falls and access to hazardous areas in the home. Most of those incidents happen in the living room, the kitchen threshold, or at the base...

Infants falling from changing tables are a documented injury risk, with falls from elevated surfaces among the leading causes of injury for babies under 12 months. A contoured changing pad is one of the simplest pieces of safety equipment in...

Plastic plug-in outlet caps have been in the "babyproofing starter kit" for decades. They cost almost nothing, they ship in packs of twenty-five, and they feel like a solved problem. They are not a solved problem.A 1997 Temple University study...

Every year, the CDC estimates that more than 3.5 million children under 14 are treated in emergency rooms for unintentional injuries, and a significant share of those involve falls against hard furniture edges. Corner and edge injuries are common enough...

Most standard baby gates top out at 32 inches wide. The average doorway in a home built after 1990 runs 32–36 inches. That math barely works, and it falls apart the moment you’re trying to close off a hallway opening,...

Every year, the CPSC receives reports of thousands of injuries to children under five involving furniture and cabinet hardware. Most happen in kitchens and bathrooms. Most are preventable. And most parents don’t realize the cabinet lock they installed three months...

The coffee table corner caught my older daughter at 22 months, right at eyebrow level. One second she was cruising the furniture, the next she was bleeding through a cloth I was pressing to her face on the way to...