When it comes to getting the right crib, car seat, or high chair for your child, it’s important to buy a new unit so that you can be reasonably sure there are no inherent safety issues associated with the products. That said, you also want to make sure that you’re not endangering others by handing over the same to friends or family.
Oftentimes you may have the best intentions in doing so, i.e. you’re just trying to save someone you care about some money. But as a response to a reader query on Philly.com explains, you can actually be doing more harm than good by “helping out” in this manner.
There are simply too many potential drawbacks to letting someone else take a given children’s product off of your hands. Safety innovations and regulations change substantially on a fairly regular basis. Researchers are constantly discovering new oversights that need to be corrected, and by handing your products over to others, their children may become susceptible to product issues that have since gone corrected in newer models.
Cribs, for instance, have benefitted from new construction that deemphasizes the types of dropsides that can cause a child to become entrapped or have a finger or toe pinched. Older high chairs may not have the appropriate straps to keep a child in place. Issues like these have led to important recalls, and you don’t want someone you care about getting ahold of a product shown to be defective after you used it.