Teenage girls enjoy wearing babies, but this style of baby care is not easy to model to teenage boys. Here’s how our fourteen year-old son, Peter, got hooked on wearing his two-month-old brother, Stephen.
Martha gave a talk on babywearing to a group of military wives at a local U.S. Marine base. To get their husbands to share more babycare, these wives asked us to make some slings in a camouflage pattern. We did. And the dads loved wearing their “baby Marines.” Peter, who was into army things anyway, couldn’t wait to put on the camouflage sling and wear his baby brother. It is necessary and important for boys to develop tenderness and paternal instincts, too. How heartwarming it was for me to see our son taking care of his little brother.
