Skip to footer

Baby safety gates may not always be safe, study finds

Baby safety gates: Most injuries weren't serious. But the researchers say parents should know about precautions.

|
Courtesy of Nationwide Children's Hospital/AP
Jessica Fannon talks to her daughter, Ella, though a mounted baby gate in her home in Grove City, Ohio. When she was just 9 months old Ella pushed through a tension-mounted gate and fell down 14 steps. A newly published study by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital has found that the number of children treated in US emergency rooms due to gate-related injuries more than tripled since 1990.
  • By Lindsey Tanner Associated Press

| CHICAGO

Baby gates meant to protect young children aren't always as safe as parents think. A new study says nearly 2,000 U.S. kids get emergency room treatment each year from injuries resulting from falling through or climbing on these gates.

Most injuries weren't serious. But the researchers say parents should know about precautions. That includes using boltedgates, not pressure-mounted ones, at the top of the stairs.

Researcher Lara McKenzie and colleagues at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, examined data on kids up to age 6.

The number injured on gates more than tripled over 20 years. These cases climbed from about 4 per 100,000 children in 1990 to almost 13 per 100,000 in 2010.

The study was published online Monday in the journal Academic Pediatrics.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Baby safety gates may not always be safe, study finds
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/0506/Baby-safety-gates-may-not-always-be-safe-study-finds
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe