Betsy Bailey

Over at Parenting.com, Alina is wondering if parents should be required to buy seats for their babies on airplanes.

My thoughts: I don’t know if it should be a law, but I wish more parents did it. We not only buy a seat for our little guy, but we schlep the car seat on board, too, and strap him right in (as you can see in the photo below).

There is no debate that this is the safest, most conservative choice. But I’m not going to argue that it should be forced upon every parent – I don’t have enough data to make that kind of call.

Safety and cost factors aside, there’s also the consideration of… being considerate.

Every time we’ve flown with Jake (two times), we’ve had the three-seat row to ourselves. But I was just on a long flight last week (3.5 hours) where a mama and her VERY restless 18 month old shared a seat in the row in front of us. It turns out that – for once! – the flight wasn’t fully booked, so mother and child ended up in separate seats anyway. (There used to be a day many years ago when you could usually count on more spaciousness like this, but that is incredibly rare on flights these days.)

The toddler was adorable and the woman they shared the row with was the easily-infatuated grandmotherly type. I was glad it was comfortable for all of them, but it did cross my mind that if that pair had been sharing the middle seat on a more crowded flight it would have been perfectly, 100% miserable for all parties concerned!

Three people sardine-canned into a row is bad enough. Adding a squirmy, restless fourth sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me. Ugh!

So I’d advise parents to keep that in mind when making their decisions about whether to purchase an extra seat, especially on longer flights with older babies. How much worse is the flight going to be for you if you’re trying to keep your little one contained and not kicking or sprawling themselves across the perfect strangers you’re scrunched in with?