What Stroller Should I Get For My Kids? Practical Tips From A Mom Of Two
Last month I stood in the middle of a big box baby store, one hand clamped around my 4-year-old’s sneaker to stop him from crawling all the way into the back of the clearance shelf, the other patting my screaming 8-month-old’s back while 17 different stroller boxes loomed over me. My text thread with three other mom friends was blowing up: one swore by a $1200 luxury jogging stroller, another said she’d never used anything beyond a $100 second-hand umbrella stroller, and a third told me I didn’t even need one if I just wore the baby. I’d gone in thinking I’d just grab whatever fit my trunk, and suddenly I was questioning if my entire approach to getting out of the house with two kids was wrong.
I’ve gone through three different stroller setups in five years of parenting, so I’ve made almost every mistake you can make. When my oldest was born, I bought the big travel system every registry checklist says you need. It had a car seat that clicked right into the base, a huge storage basket, and every extra feature you could think of. What the checklists didn’t tell me was that it was so bulky, it took up the entire trunk of my Honda Civic. I couldn’t fit more than two reusable grocery bags in with it, and I could never lift it up the stairs to my second-floor apartment by myself when my partner was at work. 90% of the time, I just left it in the car and wore my son in a wrap inside the store anyway. I sold it a year later for a third of what I paid for it.
When I found out I was pregnant with my second, I bought a wide side-by-side double because a blogger said it was the best for kids close in age. That’s how I ended up stuck between the cereal aisle and the canned beans at my local grocery store, red-faced, while my 3-year-old wiggled free and ran off to drop a 10-pound bag of flour on my foot. The stroller was four inches too wide to fit through the standard aisle, and I couldn’t turn it around to back out. That stroller ended up in my parents’ garage after three months. I swapped it for a sit-and-stand, which worked great for trips to the zoo, but my son hated standing after 20 minutes, and the front seat was too upright for my baby to nap in comfortably.
After that overwhelming day in the baby store, I went home, cleaned up the baby, gave my oldest the granola bar he’d stolen, and sat down to work out what I actually needed, instead of what everyone told me I should want. I ended up with three simple questions that I now share with every new parent asking me the same thing: what stroller should I get for my kids?
First, ask how old your kids are right now, not how old they’ll be in three years. Developmentally, kids’ needs change so fast that a stroller that works for a newborn and a 2-year-old won’t work for a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old in two years. A newborn needs a flat recline to nap safely, and if you do a lot of car trips, you’ll want one that can fit your car seat without waking the baby up when you move them. A preschooler only needs a place to crash when they get tired halfway through a day out, so you don’t need a full padded seat or extra newborn features for them. You don’t have to buy one stroller that lasts from birth to kindergarten. Strollers hold their value pretty well, and you can sell yours when your kids outgrow it and get another one for less than $300 most of the time.
Second, ask where you actually go most days, not where you plan to go on vacation once a year. If you’re like me, and most of your outings are grocery runs, library trips, and coffee dates close to home, you need a stroller that’s less than 33 inches wide to fit through standard store aisles. Measure your local grocery aisle if you don’t believe me—those wide all-terrain doubles that are great for hiking will get stuck every single time you go to the supermarket. If you take public transit or walk to the bus stop daily, test the fold before you buy: can you fold it one-handed, while holding a baby and a diaper bag? If not, you’ll never want to take it with you, no matter how many great reviews it has. If you hike or go to outdoor parks every weekend, then a wider all-terrain with big wheels is totally worth it, because you don’t need to fit through store aisles anyway.
Third, measure your trunk or your entryway closet before you buy. I can’t tell you how many people I know who bought a fancy stroller they loved, only to realize it won’t fit in their car or their small apartment storage. Mine fits across the back of my trunk with enough room left for a cooler and a diaper bag, that’s all I care about. I also don’t buy into the hype that you have to spend hundreds of dollars to get a good one. I check that the brakes work, the recline doesn’t slip, and there’s no mold on the fabric, and that’s it. I’ve had just as much luck with $100 used strollers as I would have with a top-of-the-line model.
I ended up buying a used lightweight tandem double for $250, and it’s worked for us for a year now. It fits through aisles, the back seat reclines for the baby’s nap, my oldest can climb in and out by himself, and it fits in my trunk. I still keep the old $80 umbrella stroller in my front hall for quick trips with just the baby.
Yesterday I had to run to the drugstore for allergy medicine, and I grabbed the umbrella stroller, it was perfect. Next week we’re going to the state fair, and I’ll bring the double. I already know my oldest will refuse to sit for the first two hours, then fall asleep 20 minutes before we’re ready to leave, and I’ll be glad I have somewhere to put him. I don’t have a single stroller that works for every possible situation, and I don’t think I need one. The right stroller for your kids is just the one you’ll actually pull out of the trunk and use, no matter how much it cost or what the reviews say.
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