If you post a photo of your baby in a car seat on social media, you are asking to be plucked like a chicken by every internet parenting guru — all 1 billion of them. Will someone please send that message to the Duggar family? Because Derick Dillard just shared a photo of his son, Israel David, in the car, and the gurus are going wild.
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Dillard’s intention was to show the world that the adorable 1-year-old son he is raising with mom Jill Duggar is the ultimate Oklahoma State University Cowboys football fan. (Note: OSU’s adorable cowboy mascot, Pistol Pete, carries a pistol… ya know, because he’s Pistol Pete.) Fortunately Dillard’s fans aren’t clueless enough to accuse him of promoting gun use among toddlers, but look closely, and you’ll see what they are up in arms about — something is off with Israel’s car seat straps.
Yes, it’s true: A baby’s car seat harness should be snug, and the chest clip should be clipped higher up on the chest. But why do parents assume they know exactly what’s happening during a car photo shoot? Isn’t it possible Dillard snapped this pic right before he adjusted the straps? Or the second after he loosened them to remove Israel from the car? Can we please remove the parenting sheriff’s star we got from our cereal boxes from our shirts, calm down and enjoy a baby photo (or not — or simply stop following people on Instagram who upset us)?
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We’ll defend Dillard this time, but that doesn’t mean we’re not perplexed by this entire family’s willingness to keep sharing baby photos with people who really want to catch them doing something wrong. Let’s just say the Duggars have some experience with receiving hate mail after posting photos of their babies in cars or car seats.
Remember when Jessa Duggar and her husband, Ben Seewald, had the gall to drink coffee in a coffee shop while their son, Sturgeon, played in his car seat? Some fans were quick to point out the real problem — that leaving a baby to fall asleep in a car seat can restrict their airway or lead to their becoming entangled in the straps. But did they honestly feel this was a real concern while Mom and Dad were enjoying, at most, 30 minutes of free time to sip a latte and read two articles in a newspaper while Sturgeon played 3 feet away from them?
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And then you have Jinger Duggar, who let her 4-year-old nephew, Michael, sleep in the back of her car without being properly strapped in while she ran errands. Listen, we’ve got no defense for Aunt Jinger, and maybe we would have given Jinger a bit of a tongue-lashing if we were Michael’s parents, but again, that’s only if this photo was taken mid-drive, the thought of which is even too ’70s for us to handle.
Dear Duggar family, please control your desire to photograph your children in cars, car seats or anywhere within an inch of a car, bus, train, tractor, etc. Your children are lovely, but the vehicle backdrop isn’t working for you, I’m afraid.
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