Antique High Chairs - Good Or Bad?Every parent knows that safety is of the highest importance when caring for a baby, but is it the case for buying everything that comes along with it? Think of all the things that you buy for your baby to help in the daily running of day to day life. There are the essentials, like the cot and the pushchair and the baby bath, and then there's the things that aren't necessary, but are helpful, for example, high chairs and baby bouncers. Well, let me ask you just one question - would you happily put your baby into a second hand or antique cot? Would you let him or her play with antique toys, bath him in an antique baby bath? To the majority of these questions, if not all, I can only assume that the answer from most parents would be no. It certainly would be if I was asked those questions. Your baby is precious, and you want them to have all brand new, clean, safe things. So why would you go for an antique high chair? Every antique high chair that I have seen has been wooden, and the majority varnished. Now, everybody knows that a wooden chopping board harvests more germs than a plastic one, so you can only assume that a wooden high chair would too. Also, you don't know where that wooden high chair has been before, or what restorations it has had, if any. It wouldn't be set to any government standards, so how can you be sure it would be safe? Yes, it might look good and be very stylish, and everybody loves a piece of antique furniture, but is a wooden antique high chair really the way forward? The wood is very polished and this would be very slippery for your child, admittedly it would have leather straps, (or the majority that I have seen has) which is maybe safer than the synthetic straps you get on modern high chairs today. It could prove to be a good investment, and is a must have for any antique collector, but should babies really be allowed to eat from antique high chairs? The legs are generally straight on a wooden antique high chair, whereas the ones today are slightly slanted, making them much more stable and having less risk of it tipping if the child was to wriggle and squirm too much. I wouldn't put my child in to something that I believed that wasn't stable. I can't imagine an antique high chair to be very comfortable either. Very rarely are they upholstered, so your child would park his or her precious little behind on hard wood. I certainly wouldn't want to eat off of a hard chair, so I would never expect a child to have to. Personally, I think that an antique high chair would look very good and stylish, but I wouldn't know enough about it or it's past to trust popping my child in there, especially to eat. I think I'll stick to conventional, plastic ones that are readily available today and leave the wooden antique one to sit pretty in the corner! |