Slinging London: Our writers weigh in on baby slings and masculinity

Who wore it better, Chris Evans or Daniel Craig? Chris Hemsworth knows how it’s hanging. Piers Morgan, unequivocally, does not.

We are, of course, speaking of papoose-gate, or the “dad-shaming” of James Bond, instigated by Morgan. He took to Twitter to castigate Craig’s use of a papoose to carry his child. “Oh 007... not you as well?!!!” he wrote of Craig’s baby-carrying technique, adding, “#emasculatedBond.”

Party lines seem largely to be Morgan vs everyone else. But is it emasculating? We asked four dads.

New dad rules

I hear stories of other parents driving their crying baby up and down the streets in the middle of the night to lull them into sleep.

Not so with our 12-week-old daughter. She rages when you put her into the car seat. The only thing that is almost guaranteed to get her to sleep is our sling, a BabyBjörn. Ignore Morgan’s disparaging tweets, the sling is an essential piece of dad kit.

It is the lynchpin of my evening operation. My wife goes to bed just after 9pm and I’m up with our daughter for the next hour to change her if she needs it, give her a final bottle, burp her and then put her down for the night.

The sling is crucial for this stage. Once I’ve strapped her in and started swaying or bobbing she will usually nod off within 10 minutes. It feels like a miracle every time.

The tricky bit comes next. When she’s out for the count, I move over to her cot, put on soothing “white noise” and begin the delicate sling-to-cot transfer. One false move could undo the evening so I unclasp each strap slowly and carefully, like Richard Madden defusing his own suicide vest at the end of Bodyguard. Once I’ve laid her down I can sneak into bed, silently praising the sling for working its magic.

William Moore

Babe magnet

Let’s get one thing out of the way: there is nothing sexy about parenting. For men or women. This week my son has defecated in my hand and thrown up in my shoe; sexy has left the building, taking with it dignity and sleep. The suggestion that wearing a sling is emasculating seems curious, too. What could be more manly than strapping living proof of your virility to your chest and parading around with it?

I can tell you as a gay dad that there is no faster way to experience that sweet assumption of heterosexuality than displaying your progeny like a prize. Men you don’t know are matier — one stranger shook my hand, another let me cut in front of him in a queue.

Also, let’s be honest, a newborn baby interferes with your ability and desire to go to the gym. Some of us are single and still have other gay men’s body expectations to meet. A well-positioned sling is just the thing to mask your burgeoning dad belly, while increasing your cardio. Two birds, one sling.

But the strongest argument for the sling is that your child is pressed close against you for the fleeting time they are small enough to be carried around on your chest. So maybe Piers is right after all: it is about Bond. Paternal Bond.

Jamie Anderson

Holding the baby

At the NCT classes we went to before our son was born, there was a whole session on making a natural sling for carrying the baby (in fact, a worn-looking dolly) just using a long piece of cloth. I did my best, although finding the exercise, like much that we were taught before our babies had actually arrived, more worrying than empowering.

As soon as it was that individual, our baby, I was handling rather than a hypothetical infant, all those worries vanished.

When our baby was small, my partner carried him in a sling sometimes, usually facing inward, but he never liked it with me and always much preferred to be carried. And I’ve been happy to oblige. It’s much more intimate at any age, and now that he’s a big boy (18 months), more sociable too. So I’m afraid that I’d, quite accidentally, pass the Morgan backtracking definition, that manfully carrying your baby is what Bond would do.

Papoose is an odd word, by the way, prejudicial in that it refers to North American Indian babies and then to

the pouch in which they were traditionally carried, worn on the back. Then again, of course, anybody who cares what Bond would do, in any context whatsoever, is, by definition, a dunce and an ass.

One reason people “wear” a baby is to have their hands free to do something else, probably essential if you have two babies at the same time, and helpful if you want to be on your phone. But I have never wanted to do anything else when with him.

David Sexton

Empower ranger

The panic creases across my wife’s face. “Please tell me you packed the sling?” My nine-week-old, pram-hating daughter has only ever made it out of the house in a sling. It’s the only way we can look after our new baby and chase our two-year-old lad about. The genius of a baby-carrier is that it lets you go hands-free, while at the same time getting your baby to sleep, or in my wife’s case, to breastfeed.

Far from emasculating, the sling is empowering for blokes. The first couple of months of a child’s life often sees their dad clumsily offering to help but often essentially useless. But when you don the sling, everything changes: with baby nestled on your chest, you can give Mum a break and bond with your baby. And the chance to kiss their head 1,000 times a day is too tempting.

When my son, now two, was born, the soft Kari Me (a piece of fabric that wouldn’t look out of place on Obi-Wan Kenobi), tied my mind in knots, but it was game-changing. When he was bigger, I wore him in the more structured BabyBjörn. So attached were we (me, sling and baby), I couldn’t admit he’d got too big for it when a week in hilly Lisbon had my back screaming.

Second time around, the lightweight Connecta, with a harness to fit newborns, offers a more structured early option. You don’t get to keep them this close for long. Embrace it — tell small-minded critics to sling their hook.

Alex Lawson