I’ve started writing three different posts today, and abandoned each after a few paragraphs—bored to tears by what I’d written.

And then I found a “One Step Ahead” catalog in the pile of mail on my desk and started thumbing through it. I’ve now decided this catalog is my muse. Because it is such a rich treasure trove of crap to make fun of.

For those of you who don’t know what “One Step Ahead” is, it’s a catalog that bills itself as “Thoughtfully Selected Products to Help With Baby…Every Step of the Way.” But what it should really be called is, “Thoughtfully Selected Products For the Most Paranoid and Guilt-Ridden Of Parents.”

Ok, a quick disclaimer: I’ve bought several products from this catalog, thus why I’m on the mailing list. Some of them are really useful: the baby gates, the booster seats, the outlet covers, and the like. And it has some cool, creative toys. But so many of the products seem so outside the realm of normal, I shudder to imagine the parents who are buying them.

A few examples:

• The “Relax Right Memory Foam Pillow”: A $24.95 pillow for toddlers ages 18 months to five years. “Ordinary pillows push the spine out of alignment; that’s not good for growing bones!” it tells me.

Oh really? Every night when I put my kids to sleep, they ‘re laying with their heads on their $5 cotton-poly pillows. By the time I check on them before I go to bed—three to four hours later—their heads aren’t anywhere near the pillow, which is a good thing because usually it is either on the floor, or wedged into the corner of the bed against the wall. Why in the world would I spend that much money on a pillow that would likely suffer the same fate? I’m going to take a gamble and say that my growing bones did just fine on the pillows I had as a child, which were likely made out of asbestos, and assume that my children’s bones will do just fine, too.

• The “Gummi Crib Rail”: For just $13.95, you can turn your baby’s crib rail into a teether! I’m not exactly sure what this is. From what I can tell from the picture, it looks like a strip of rubber you attach to the crib rail, that your child can then suck and chew on. “Protects both baby and his crib,” the catalog reads. I really didn’t know either of these things were an issue. I’ve never heard dentists warn parents about the myriad dental problems that result from chewing on bed rails. Nor have I heard of paint ingestion or gum splinters. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids and never once have any of them complained about their teething babies chewing the furniture to pieces like a new puppy. But a product has been developed, so I assume this is a problem for at least some children? Or was this a product that was developed in search of a problem? I seriously suspect the latter.

• “Infant/Child CPR Instructional DVD”: “In a mere quarter of an hour [and for just $19.95], you can learn how to save your child’s life!” Okay, there’s nothing wrong with learning CPR. It’s a good skill to have. But I hate the paranoid tactics used to push CPR classes onto parents. They talk as if babies are suffocated on an hourly basis and the only thing standing between your child and certain death is your resuscitation skills. Further, this DVD in particular bothers me because, according to the ad copy, “it uses real kids—not dolls—so you learn more effectively.” What the hell? It uses real kids? What child actors did they find to agree to that: “Here, Kate, inhale this marble into your wind pipe.” Or, “Here, Josh…we know you can’t swim yet, but two words: ‘Canon ball!’” [splash.]

• But I think my favorite product the catalog has to offer is the “Portable UV Pacifier Sterilizer.” That’s right, Mommy! If you’re tired of your baby dropping his pacifier in the tobacco-spit in the Wal-Mart parking, now you can sterilize on-the-go. For just $29.95, you can have this “ingenious, palm-sized sterilizer” that is “clinically proven to destroy 99.9% of germs” in just six minutes!

First of all, I’d love to see a kid attached to his pacifier wait a full six minutes for it to be sterilized before it’s returned to his mouth. By definition, children are an impatient lot, and I can’t imagine any child kicking back and reading the latest issue of Scientific American while waiting for the advanced UV technology to work its magic on his binky. If a child does have that kind of patience, that’s a clue that he’s way too old to be sucking on a pacifier.

Second, aside from children with suppressed immune systems, is there any mother out there who thinks any sickness her child has ever had can be attributed to a dirty pacifier? If your baby is mobile and has any contact with other children in any way (at the park, in Kindermusik, in preschool or daycare), the number of germs they’re swapping is so astronomically high, it makes the bacteria swimming around on a recently crash-landed pacifier look like a sample taken from a clean room. I’ve seen toddlers eat each other’s boogers. I’ve seen them lick ketchup off tables in restaurants. I’ve seen a baby regurgitate a cracker and then hand it to his playmate, who quickly swallowed it. Do you really think the pacifier that spent three seconds on the ground is your biggest worry?

Oy.

Mostly, I just enjoy laughing at this stuff. It gives me something to do between eating and checking Facebook. But when I stop laughing, I find myself really, really annoyed by it. Because I think marketers who hawk products like this do a real disservice to parents and, ultimately, their kids. We already live in a parent culture ruled by fear—why propagate it?

The answer, of course, is because it makes money. In this way, the baby products industry is eerily similar to the beauty products industry: Make people insecure so they’ll buy products that give them the illusion of control. No one wants to be the parent who didn’t spend $13.95 on the bed rail teether and then have a child with an abscess from a splinter. Nor do you want to have the kid who catches the rare auto-immune disease from the contaminated pacifier. These products shout at us, loudly and insistently: “What if…?! What if…?! What if…?!” and leave us to fill in the horrifying blanks.

I’ve spent the better part of my time as a mother rebelling against this. When the preschool Noah was attending as a two-year-old offered a low-cost CPR certification class, I refused to sign up. “How many people do you know who’ve had to do CPR on their kids?” I asked Dave, who thought I was being unnecessarily stubborn.

“None,” he answered.

“Right.”

“But what if something happened and you needed it?” he countered.

“That’s what 911 is for.”

As I recount that, I realize it sounds a bit cavalier. How could I not take a course that would teach me how to save the life of my child? But being a parent means constantly balancing our natural fear for our children’s safety with reality. I used baby gates because the risk of my toddling baby tumbling down the stairs was high. I put squishy rubber things on the corners of our coffee table when Noah and Gwyneth were little because it was very likely one of them was going to clock their head on it. I kept medicines and chemicals locked up and out of reach. I put plastic thingies in the outlets. But a specially designed pillow to help my child’s bone development? A bed rail teether? A portable pacifier sterilizer? Really?

I remember my grandmother looking at the small mountain of gifts I’d received at my baby shower before Noah was born. She shook her head and said, “And to think I raised six kids without all this stuff.” At the time, it annoyed me. As a rule, I don’t subscribe to the whole, “Well, you ate lead-based paint chips as a kid and you turned out fine!” parenting philosophy. But now that I’ve had two kids and successfully raised them through babyhood, I realize what she meant. There are actually very few things you really need to get you through your child’s early years: a good nursing bra and breast pump; a good baby carrier and stroller; and a lot of diapers. What you really need, you can’t buy: patience, perspective, a good night’s sleep, and love—lots and lots of love.