No, this is not about putting a baby gorilla in a sling. You’ve probably heard of flash mobs, where a group meets in a public place at a precise time to do something that draws attention. And no doubt you know what guerilla gardening is, or you’ve at least seen the TV ads for the new show. Guerilla Babywearing is fun, free, and helps other families. It’s community advocacy on steroids.

The world’s coolest babywearing t-shirt by UK comic artist quigonjim

Wikipedia defines guerilla warfare as “the unconventional warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army. The guerrilla army uses ambush (stealth and surprise) and mobility (draw enemy forces to terrain unsuited to them) in attacking vulnerable targets in enemy territory.”

In Guerilla Babywearing, the small group of combatants is your local slingwearing group; the larger and less mobile army are the pram-pushers at the mall (obviously… ever tried to get past a twin stroller in the supermarket?). The basic ambush is to get your local babywearing group to meet up at the mall, in full combat uniform ie wearing your most attention-getting sling or carrier. Pamir may be expensive, but the colour scheme is too neutral to attract the attention of a Bugaboo-pushing parent - Earthy Rainbows would work better. The idea is to get out there and demonstrate how useful babywearing is, and that parents who use slings or carriers are not that much different to other parents. And to demonstrate this to the parents who most need this information - the parents who never get to see good quality baby carriers in use.

 

Before I got into babywearing myself, I didn’t personally know other babywearers. I had conversed with a few online, but they were all hard-core wrappers (I’m resisting the urge to add a bad music pun here). It wasn’t until I came across a local mum who used a padded-rail ring sling that I was able to get some help with the sling I already had, and from there I developed the confidence to try all kinds of slings. Imagine what a non-babywearer might think when they see parents of all shapes and sizes, both mums and dads and maybe grandparents too, with mei tais and wraps and pouches and ring slings… a whole new world opens up for them.

 

But it’s no good flash mobbing the local park, or the natural parenting mother’s group. Parents who have no idea about baby carriers don’t go to these places. It’s too hard to push a pram through the park, and mothers who join a natural parenting group are already open to concepts like babywearing. The people we need to reach are the ones who have no idea what they’re missing. And the best place to find them is the mall - easily accessible for pram users, lots of families per square inch, and your guerilla army can sit down with a soy latte or chai while doing their bit for the babywearing community.

 

If you want to make your guerilla babywearing event a success, here are a few tips:

• Get the participants to be on time. I know it’s hard to get parents of small babies to be on time for anything, but the bigger a group is, the more visual impact it has. Flash mobs synchronise their watches to the second for maximum impact. If you can at least get all your babywearers in the same place for a good twenty minutes, it will make for a great effect.
• Be bold in selecting your babywearing attire. If you can wear two, or even three, at once it’s even better. A good SSC might be an attractive option to a non-babywearer who has aching shoulders from their clip-on carrier, but an SSC convention (no matter how pretty the prints are) is just not as “out-there” as the other babywearing options. Bright colours, loud prints, and matching carry bags are all good looks.
• Make sure everyone has lots of cards for your local babywearing group. If you’re going to attract attention, do something useful with it. Assimilate the pram-pushers into the babywearing Borg. Resistance is futile!
• You could have prizes to encourage participation from your fellow babywearers: most cards handed out, best dressed etc.

I’m hoping the Canberra Babywearers will take up this idea for our next meeting. With four major shopping malls, two of them owned by Westfield, the biggest problem will probably be which mall to hit first. To quote Che Guevara, “Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”

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Tags: advocacy