Before becoming a dad, I thought accessibility was mostly about wheelchair ramps, elevators, and handicap parking spaces. Then I had a child.
Now I spend an alarming amount of my life trying to figure out how to get a stroller from Point A to Point B without performing an Olympic-level feat of strength.
The first thing parenthood teaches you is that America may love families in theory, but it often seems confused by their existence in practice.
Take the average restaurant. You arrive with a stroller carrying everything required to keep a small human alive for the next three hours. The front door weighs approximately the same as a bank vault. There’s no automatic opener. You manage to wedge the stroller through while holding the door with your foot and apologizing to strangers you’ve accidentally blocked.
Then comes the seating arrangement.
The hostess looks at the stroller as if you’ve arrived with a riding lawn mower.
“Can you fold that up?”
Sure. Let me just remove the sleeping baby, gather the diaper bag, hold the bottle, collect the toys that have fallen onto the floor, and somehow grow a third arm.
The challenges don’t stop there. Sidewalks often disappear without warning. Curb cuts are inconsistent. Older buildings require navigating stairs. Store aisles seem designed around the dimensions of a shopping cart but somehow not a stroller. Even public events advertised as “family friendly” frequently involve gravel paths, narrow entrances, or parking lots that require pushing a stroller over terrain better suited for mountain bikes.
What’s fascinating is that these obstacles reveal something bigger about how America is designed.
Many of our spaces assume that adults move through the world independently and efficiently. Drive somewhere. Walk in. Buy the thing. Leave.
But life isn’t always that simple.
Parents with strollers, people using wheelchairs, elderly individuals with walkers, travelers with luggage, and anyone helping someone else navigate the world all encounter the same friction. A single step at an entrance might seem insignificant until you’re the person trying to get through it while managing a stroller and a screaming toddler.
The irony is that infrastructure designed for accessibility almost always helps everyone.
Automatic doors help parents, delivery workers, and people carrying groceries. Wider aisles make stores easier to navigate for everyone. Elevators benefit travelers, workers, seniors, and families. Smooth sidewalks are useful whether you’re pushing a stroller, pulling a suitcase, or simply walking.
Good accessibility isn’t a special accommodation. It’s good design.
I’ve started noticing this whenever I travel. In some places, family life seems intentionally incorporated into the design of cities. Public transit accommodates strollers. Sidewalks are wide. Public spaces assume children exist. Families aren’t treated like unusual edge cases.
Meanwhile, in many parts of America, bringing a stroller anywhere feels like you’re beta-testing a feature nobody expected users to need.
To be clear, this isn’t about convenience. Parenting has never been convenient, nor should it be expected to be. The challenge is that so many of the difficulties parents face aren’t created by children. They’re created by environments that fail to account for them.
A sleeping baby in a stroller shouldn’t turn a coffee run into a tactical operation.
Yet somehow, every curb, doorway, staircase, and narrow aisle can make it feel that way.
So the next time you see a parent struggling to maneuver a stroller through a doorway, remember: they’re not just transporting a child. They’re conducting an involuntary audit of America’s infrastructure.
And the infrastructure is not always passing.
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