The Parenting Journal

Mesh gates are safe for flat doorways, never for the top of stairs. Look for explicit ASTM F1004 compliance before buying any gate. Adhesive mounts need 24–72 hours to cure and monthly integrity checks. Retractable gates suit high-traffic areas, freestanding...

About 93,000 children under 5 are treated in U.S. emergency rooms each year for stair-related injuries, according to a Nationwide Children’s Hospital analysis of CPSC NEISS data. That works out to roughly one child every six minutes. If you have...

Every year, an average of 17,800 people visit emergency rooms for injuries caused by furniture and TV tip-overs, per the CPSC 2023 Annual Tip-Over Report. Children bear the worst of it. CPSC reports one child death every two weeks from...

The dresser in my older daughter’s room looked stable. Heavy oak, four drawers, pushed against the wall. I thought nothing of it until she was about 22 months old and I walked in to find her standing in the second...

Every two weeks, a child in the United States dies because a piece of furniture fell on them. That’s not a metaphor for a broader risk category. CPSC reports one child death every two weeks from furniture, TV, or appliance...

The bathroom door was open for maybe ninety seconds. That’s all it took for my younger daughter, at 18 months, to push the door wide, cross the tile, and have both hands in the toilet bowl before I got there....

The monitor sitting on your nightstand is only as useful as the decisions you made buying it. Get the wrong one and you’re either squinting at a laggy, pixelated feed from your phone at 2 a.m. or tethered to a...

The camera is sitting right on the crib rail. The cord loops down the side of the mattress, coils on the floor, and disappears under the dresser. It is a setup I see in almost every nursery photo posted in...

Every outlet in your home is a hole in the wall at a toddler’s eye level. That’s not a metaphor. It’s a physical description of what your child sees when they’re 28 inches tall and curious about everything. From 1991...