By Vern Hill, Founder of Carifit and expert speaker at The Baby Show which returns to Olympia London from 24th – 26th October 2025.
Parenthood is a rich tapestry of tender moments, constant firsts, amazement, and sometimes, of exhaustion. At Carifit, we’ve witnessed firsthand how the simple act of babywearing can transform lives, infusing daily routines with connection, calm, movement and confidence. There is the science, the practical benefits, and the emotional impact of wearing your baby and why that close contact and connection really matters in the modern world.
1. Rooted in Attachment: Building Emotional Bonds
Attachment isn’t just a feeling; it’s a developmental foundation. Research consistently shows that infants carried close to their caregivers experience increased calmness, responsiveness, and more secure attachment. In one experimental study, infants whose mothers wore them in carriers showed stronger attachment security later on in life, in fact secure attachment impacts every single area of adult life, health, mental health, social skills and even wealth!
2. Physiological Harmony: Soothing Body and Brain
Wearing your baby isn’t just emotionally uplifting and good for both parent and baby, it has tangible physical benefits. Skintoskin contact, a close cousin of babywearing, has long been documented to stabilize infants’ heart rate, breathing, temperature, and even help with weight gain in preterm babies. While babywearing typically occurs through fabric and clothing, it offers similar sensory and calming input, motion, warmth, and heartbeat which are all vital to neurological development and vestibular system development.
3. Mother’s WellBeing: Support in the Emotional Storm
Postpartum life can be overwhelming. Yet babywearing offers emotional relief: increased oxytocin (the “love hormone”), reduced cortisol, and improved mood and bonding experiences for caregivers. And in a broader 2023 scoping review, researchers concluded babywearing may offer beneficial biological and behavioural effects for mothers and infants alike even though more study is needed for definitive guidance. Most importantly babywearing offer opportunity for movement and freedom both of which have a significant positive impact on PND and postnatal anxiety.
4. Physical Development: Supporting Healthy Muscles and Hips
Babywearing supports infants’ biomechanical development. Proper age and stage appropriate positioning encourages healthy hip alignment and may reduce risk of flat head compared to extended time in flat car seats or strollers. It also supports core and neck muscle development via gentle, natural motion and engagement, in short you baby is learning human movement from human movement, adapting to a bending, walking, twisting in motion body of the wearer.
5. Calming Crying, Enhancing Sleep
Studies show babies who are worn sleep more easily, cry less, and experience fewer episodes of fussiness. One source note that just three hours of babywearing daily can reduce crying by up to 54%. This reflects baby’s primal drive for motion and closeness and underscores how simple closeness can be a powerful parenting tool. This has a further huge knock-on effect to PND and anxiety creating a calmer, quieter household and giving parents a “go to” way to calm babies on those days they just simply want be held.
6. Emotional Awareness and Mindfulness
Wearing your baby cultivates mindfulness. Feeling their breath, the rhythm of their movements, the soft sigh, they anchor you in the present. Many parents describe how babywearing keeps them attuned to small cues: yawns, curious gazes, the way they react to sounds. Over time, that mindfulness nourishes parental confidence and emotional balance. This is all a huge win for parenting confidence and can babywearing can be a powerful tool for secondary caregivers like grandparents, aunts and uncles to quickly get to know a new member of the family.
7. Community, Connection, and Culture
Babywearing is deeply cultural and community oriented. From traditional carriers like the Inuit amauti to the Dayak Bening, babywearing is woven into global parenting traditions. In our modern communities, wearing your baby often invites conversation, advice, and solidarity, especially through shared interests in attachment parenting or babywearing workouts, fitness or dance classes like Carifit. At Carifit events and local meets, we’ve seen first-hand how support networks flourish around babywearing and movement.
Final Thoughts
Babywearing is both ancient and timely, a natural extension of human caregiving, flourishing with modern understanding. It is an age-old answer to a thousand modern parenting challenges, from navigating busy cities with your baby close and safe to exploring trails and tracks that buggies cannot reach or simply keeping your baby calm at home. At Carifit, we’re inspired daily by how it brings families closer, calms the chaos, and helps parents confidently meet each day. It’s more than a baby carrier, it is a tool for modern parents to build connection, confidence and raise incredible children.
