I spent most of my Friday night installing a metal gate in the doorway between our kitchen and our living room. This means we’ve taken a giant leap toward making our house “baby-proof.”

For me, a self-admitted neurotic freak, the rest of this process likely will be incredibly fulfilling.

Over the next week or so, I’ll install drawer and cabinet anchors, lock up all of our cleaning solutions and protect any remaining naked AC outlets with plastic covers (I got most of ‘em when L first started crawling).

At some point, I suppose I also could put some sort of cord retracting device on our blind pulls, affix a cantilevered ledge/shield-thingy to our stove and install one of those toilet locks on our toilets. After looking through catalogs such as One Step Ahead, I see there is no shortage of items parents can buy to make themselves feel like they’re protecting baby from the dangers of home.

Still, despite my neuroses, I can’t help but wonder how much of this whole “baby-proofing” thing can be eliminated with the simple act of good parenting.

Do we really need drawer and cabinet anchors when we can just watch the baby to make sure she doesn’t get into stuff she’s not supposed to touch? Do we really need a special ledge/shield-thingy on our stove when we can just watch her to make sure she doesn’t pull down the pot of boiling water?

Oh, and why can’t we just cover those outlets with our hands when the baby gets close?

Yes, these provisions make the whole job of chasing after baby a lot easier. And, yes, I admit that I’ve bought into the whole idea of buying this stuff in spades. But considering the way this subset of the baby industrial complex keeps parental interests in mind, perhaps the process should be called “parent-proofing” instead.