Mums are being robbed of their pricey buggies – and it’s sparked a mini crimewave

My coronary heart was pounding. I had taken my daughter Liberty, then about 10 months outdated, to a mum and child yoga class in west London, when immediately there was an infinite scream from outdoors the venue – it sounded as if someone was being murdered. All of us ran out to analyze the supply of the commotion. I seemed over the railings. “Catch him!” one mum shouted, as a buggy snatcher fled out of sight from the pram park with three or 4 light-weight and collapsible YOYO prams over his shoulder.

These stylish and light-weight French-designed buggies – one of many few that may match into an plane holdall – are beloved by celebrities together with Keira Knightley, Eddie Redmayne, and Kim Kardashian. They value round £399 new. That’s, in fact, earlier than the add-ons: there’s the cup holder to your flat white, the leather-based handlebars and footmuff, the parasol and mosquito internet. However so far as costly strollers are involved, it’s low cost. The typical worth of an upmarket buggy is extra more likely to be £700 to £1500, and others value extra. A top-of-the-range Cybex Platinum e-Pram prices £2,289, with its app-controlled rocking perform to appease your child, whereas a Child Dior Stroller in powder pink prices £2,600.

The panic on the yoga class was due to this fact comprehensible – it’s not simply you can’t ferry your kids round with no pram, it’s additionally the usually eye-watering value of changing it. The mums like me have been unable to run down the road after the thief as a result of we have been nonetheless holding our infants. As a substitute, we seemed on in desperation to see if our prams have been nonetheless there – I noticed my YOYO because it had a caterpillar toy hanging from the handlebars. A number of the unfortunate few collapsed in tears.

This was years in the past – Liberty is now six – however thefts of buggies have solely boomed since then. At this time it’s a miniature crimewave, in keeping with the Metropolitan Police. Between 2021 and July 2024, 1,500 buggies and wheelchairs (that are recorded collectively) have been reported stolen in London alone – and it’s on the rise. Throughout the UK the figures are even larger – many of those thefts aren’t reported, both – and it’s making a “black market” for posh buggies.

You solely should look on the Nextdoor app to identify neighbours of yours who’ve encountered this very drawback. It’s not simply rich yummy mummies falling sufferer to pram thieves, both, however abnormal ladies – just like the one whose model new buggy was taken from a pram park in a Sainsbury’s whereas her child was sitting within the purchasing trolley.

Strollers are being stolen from vehicles in smash-and-grab sprees, or from the boot when vehicles are left open on individuals’s driveways. Different occasions, buggies get stolen together with the automotive – however whereas the car is usually retrieved, the buggy is just not. It’s a profitable sideline for thieves and opportunists – a bit like stealing Amazon packages from individuals’s entrance gardens.

Now dad and mom are discovering their stolen buggies on Fb Market or eBay, the place they’ve been put up on the market by buggy burglars. However whilst you would possibly be capable to purchase them again – having recognised, say, the distinct vomit stains down the facet of 1 – that’s typically the place the story ends. More often than not there is no such thing as a proof that the net vendor is similar one who stole the buggy – and police are unable to prosecute. And all of it is a fast-growing crime because of the truth that posh pushchairs barely lose their worth – as I found after I bought my second-hand YOYO for £200.

So, is it actually any shock that the felony underworld has set its sights on designer prams? And even after we know {that a} luxurious buggy makes us a goal, why can we hold shopping for them?

“Strollers are one of the vital seen equipment that new dad and mom have,” says the American creator Amanda Parrish Morgan, who wrote 2002’s Stroller, wherein she unpacks the buggy’s impression on motherhood. “It’s a approach of signalling one thing very public about our priorities and ethos as dad and mom. Particularly, the super-expensive ones would possibly recommend a mom keen to spare no value for her baby in a world the place we’ve got so little management over the issues that, way more than fashion or security of child gear, actually scare us about our kids’s futures.”

Whereas fixating on the most secure pram would possibly assist us attempt to create the phantasm of management, Parrish Morgan additionally goes so far as to recommend that it’s not simply the pram that may be a commodity – it’s now additionally the kid. “There’s a bent to view kids as merchandise slightly than as people – as one thing dad and mom are ‘producing’,” she says.

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In keeping with Janet Rawnsley, the creator of 2009’s The British Pram: A Historical past of Prams, the “game-changer” for the luxurious buggy market was the Bugaboo pram, which turned all the fashion in about 2004. It was the primary of the tremendous trendy, design-led and compact pushchairs with a removable carrycot, and have become in style after showing in an episode of Intercourse and the Metropolis in 2002 – it could possibly be seen parked within the hallway of Miranda’s condo after a sleepless evening together with her child. Very quickly, the Frog – as this early mannequin was named – was the pram of selection for celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, regardless of costing £500, which at the moment was much more than every other pram available on the market.

Rawnsley says that till then dad and mom had cumbersome and strong pushchairs – the poshest have been from Silver Cross and Marmet within the Fifties and early Sixties. That’s till the transportable folding Maclaren buggy turned vastly in style in 1967; it was primary in deck chair stripe in pink, blue or brown. However now, with prams holding a lot extra weight than simply the kid in it, is it a query of the higher the pram, the higher the father or mother?

Professor Carolyn Mair, a trend enterprise marketing consultant and the creator of The Psychology of Style, tells me that the buggy you select says so much about you as a father or mother. “The rise of luxurious prams may be seen as a part of a broader development the place shopper items develop into extensions of private id,” she says. “Traditionally, dad and mom have sought high-quality merchandise for his or her kids, however the fashionable emphasis on branding and design displays a shift in the direction of what’s termed ‘performative parenting’. That is amplified on social media because the buggy turns into a prop in curated depictions of household life. The pram turns into a approach of projecting a fastidiously curated picture of contemporary, succesful, and profitable parenting.”

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This might, she says, recommend that some dad and mom really feel they’re “higher caregivers” if they’ll afford and show premium items for his or her baby. The snobbery is much like luxurious purses and vehicles, she factors out, and “it stems from the psychological affiliation between materials items and self-worth”.

However whereas the selection of pram can present new dad and mom affected by “standing nervousness” a level of reassurance to assist them really feel much less weak to judgement about their parenting decisions, this profit is often short-lived. “It may be problematic if the pram turns into a part of a cycle the place materials items are used to handle emotional insecurities.”

The reality is, most of us mums aren’t excited about the psychological impression of prams after we obsess over whether or not to get a stroller with all-terrain wheels – like Meghan Markle, who opted for a top-of-the-range Bugaboo Fox with “all-wheel suspension” for Archie costing £1,305. All we care about is whether or not we’d like a jogger, one with puncture-proof tyres, or an egg form so it appears like a Design Museum exhibit. However on the finish of the day, in the event that they’re going to get stolen, wouldn’t a primary £35 one from Argos do?