S/O Is sitting in the back with baby that uncommon?

[Zukini]

Is it really weird to sit in the back with the baby or a toddler? DH and I never planned to, but one of us always sits in the back with DS if the other parent is driving. He's 14 months now and will be rear facing for awhile still, and it's only happened a handful of times for the other person to get in the front passenger seat eg when hopping back in the car from the curb in front of a store. DS is great in the car regardless of who is back there but it's such a nice thing to have "face time" with the baby as well as conversation with the driving parent. He still nurses so sometimes I sit there so it's faster to quickly nurse him in the car before we get out at our destination. And DH likes the time to unplug and just talk and sing to him and make faces (and sometimes answer emails too lol but generally interact with him) etc.

Based on responses in another thread re: positioning kids in back, it made me realize this might be outlier behavior lol. Is it?

[JBaxter]

i have 4 kids 23-6 and I would have to say it would be very rare for me to sit in the back when they were little.

[hillview]

We did with our first when he was an infant. Think we did also with DS2 as an infant at times. But at 14 months no unless there was a reason (eg he needed help with something or was sick or something)

[nmosur]

I did for the first 20 months or so until we went on a long road trip. Its something that is more prevalent in Indian families - all my Indian friends did this.

[BananaMama]

we never did except on long road trips back when we had only 1

[AngB]

I sat in the back with ds1 on the way home from the hospital. And maybe a couple times on portions of long trips to help settle crying kids. But that's it. We just brought DS3 home from the hospital a couple weeks ago and he was fine in the back by himself for the 10 min ride home from the hospital.

[SnuggleBuggles]

They made me when we left the hospital but that was probably it. Mirrors worked fine to keep an eye on things.

[gymnbomb]

DS is 18 months old and I can only think of about 3 times when an adult has sat in the back with him when the front seat was not also occupied. One time I sat with him to keep him from falling asleep on the way home from a store about an hour away because we didn't want him to fall asleep halfway home and then not take a real nap. The other 2 times were at the end of road trips when we wanted/needed to drive another hour or so and he was getting tired of being in the car.

[mom2binsd]

Only on the car ride home from hospital... Never had the need to and I get carsick so as a passenger it wouldn't work and I often was the only adult in the car.

[AnnieW625]

I did when DDs came home from the hospital, but I don't recall it being a requirement. Other than that the only time until they were about 6 months old and they noticed someone else sitting in the back with them. With DD1 we had to take DH's grandma with us somewhere and DD1 freaked out so I sat in the back with her and DH's grandma sat in the front. Same thing happened with DD2 at about the same age when we were taking my sister somewhere. The only other time I remember sitting in the back was when DH and I took DD2 to a funeral 90 minutes away when she was 8 days old and I wasn't sure if she was going to be hungry or not so we took a bottle with us so I could feed her along the way.

In general though I do see it a lot here in So Cal though.