6 Progressive Parenting Fads You Won't Believe Are Legal

6 Suspended Baby Cages

We know what you're thinking: it's just a playpen with a lid, and what's so horrific about that? Even the best mother can't hover over a toddling baby 24/7, so putting a baby in a safe place, even if it kind of looks like a cage, at least keeps him away from the machete drawer.

It's at this point that we should probably clarify what we're talking about here. It's not that the contraption was merely a cage, even though we do want to go on the record as being anti-putting-babies-in-wire-cages. It's that this particular cage was not on the ground. It was suspended out of a window, like so:

Have you ever looked up at an AC unit precariously perched on the edge of a fourth-story window and wondered if that thing would work as a baby holder? No? Huh.

In the 1930s, London mothers had a problem. Unlike country babies, city babies didn't have acres of rambling estates to crawl around. Fortunately, some idiot in America patented the perfect solution for air-starved infants -- a baby kennel that hung out the window. Mini-humans with a hankerin' for fresh air could just crawl right out the window into their totally safe cages.

The best part is that the mother doesn't scream in horror as her child totters out an open window, or that she never realizes she's trained her baby to totter out open windows. The other best part is how the patent specifies the mom can lock the cage from the interior of the house, just in case the baby really wants to get back inside but hasn't been aired out enough yet. The patent also specifies that the cage has a solid lid, so the little tyke won't get wet in the "snow and rain."

Fresh air was a fucking huge commodity back then, apparently.

5 Baby Juggling (aka Baby Yoga)

Don't you hate how your newborn infant just lays around, all immobile and way too easy to kill? Look at it. It's practically begging predators or a strong wind to put mild pressure on a few choice spots and turn your future meal ticket into just a meal.

According to baby yoga instructor Lena Fokina, the problem isn't that evolution has rendered us as helpless as a lump of used up Kleenex when we're born; it's that we're not hating our baby's weaknesses enough. You need to be teaching that infant mobility, freedom and independence, and also how to survive in a world filled with windmills, tornadoes and batshit yoga instructors.

Here's a video where you can learn exactly how stupid you've been, treating your infant like it's some kind of tiny bag of meat-glass. Warning: Don't watch this video. Just fucking don't.

Yes, that is a real baby, and no, swinging a newborn child around like a flaming lasso is not a good idea, no matter how wide your yoga gauchos are or how mystic the writing on your orange sweatpants looks. Yet somebody handed over their tiny, days-old babies to this horrible woman to swing, presumably because they couldn't face the shame of straight up killing their children themselves. And just so we're very, very clear, Lena Fokina isn't doing the playful swing-around we all loved as sturdy, not-just-born-and-totally-able-to-hold-our-necks-upright-children:

Not at all. She's single-handedly swinging those naked newborns by the ankle in what appears to be a rock garden. The only way this lady could make the situation more deadly would be if there were a Crips and Bloods gang war going on all around her. But even then, someone would probably rush that baby to safety before commencing with the killing. No one would remove Lena, though. She's fine where she is.

4 Male Breast-Feeding

For years now, women have been jabbering about getting their equal share of things. Votes, jobs, sandwiches, syphilis ... nothing is left untouched by power-hungry feminists. So it's no surprise that men have started asking for their slices of traditional woman pie as well. Including providing sustenance to baby humans with their man teats.

The Milk Men are a group of guys who say that with a little patience, men can make man milk come out of their boobies, or moobies. All the parts are there -- mammary tissue, milk ducts and the milk-producing hormones oxytocin and prolactin. All it takes to get started is a lack of humility and the willpower and diligence to get the milk flowing. A few minutes of letting a breast pump tug at your nipples doesn't hurt, either. If you're NOT AT WORK and DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR EYES, you can watch the video below to get a little taste of what male nursing looks like:

We're not sure why there was a naked lady in a red tub, either, so don't ask.

Apparently, just the act of suckling triggers the hormones that make milk. In fact, there's one African tribe where it's the men who nurse the babies and the women who bring home the bacon, thereby earning the nickname "Best Dads in the World." Take that, Dr. Huxtable! You never even once nursed your children on your bosom! Never. Even. Once.

3 No-Diaper Pooping

Sick of the ridiculous costs of diapers? A little simple math reveals that the average yearly cost of using disposable diapers is a whopping $2,577.35. That's just entirely too much of the midlife crisis whores-and-coke fund going down the poop chute, if you ask us.

Well, elimination communication is the answer. This is where you use "timing, signals, cues and intuition" to figure out when you need to hold your baby over a cup before getting covered in all their pees and poops. Considering "signals" and "cues" are kind of actually the same thing, what's really going to happen is you're going to end up saying "Is that a poop-squint or an 'I'm too stupid to know how to smile' squint?", "How long has it been since my baby last shit all over me?" and "What does my gut say I should do?"

This can only end with parent and child in a daylong death-match staring contest, holding the kid over a bowl, willing it to shit.

But as long as you're willing to risk the inevitable conclusion of going naked all the time with a pooping baby in one hand and an adult-sized box of wipes in the other, here's where you can buy some plastic cups to duct-tape to your baby's rump.

Because this is waaaay easier than just buying some diapers, obviously.

2 Raising Kids to Be Androgynous

Far be it from us to criticize parents who let their boys dress like girls or let their daughters pee standing up. Who are we to judge? But it's one thing to let your boys assert their personalities through sequined corsets or whatever; it's altogether different when you keep the world in the dark on the very first thing anybody ever notices about a person, ever. And that's exactly what parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have decided to do with their son/daughter Storm. The only people who are in on Storm's private parts are its parents and its brothers, Kio and Jazz, who are probably more concerned with getting their parental emancipation documents in order than protecting the gender identity of their sibling.

The idea, according to the parents, is to see what happens when no one knows what their kid is. The child will know, obviously, unless they plan on sticking a blindfold on it and hope for the best every time nature calls. In other words, these parents are conducting a social experiment with their baby. And that's not the worst part. The worst part is that its big brothers are sworn to secrecy over the baby's sex, as if letting a child conform to gender stereotypes is morally repugnant, yet asking a toddler to keep a family secret locked deep down inside him is totally healthy.

If this were just the story of one whack family, we'd chalk it up to Canadian weirdness and let it go. But apparently not assigning genders to little people is catching on in other places as well. A whole other couple is doing the same thing with their little it in Sweden. Speaking of Sweden, one Swedish preschool prohibits students from addressing classmates with the pronouns "him" or "her," instead opting to call everyone "friend." As in "Where is Elsa? Have you seen friend?" Imagine trying to get through your work day talking like that and not sounding like Tonto.

Fairy tales that promote gender stereotypes are as out the door as last year's IKEA catalog, as well. And it's a good thing. For too long the Swedes have walked around thinking dragons kidnap princesses and giants live on beanstalks and calling someone a "she" or "her" is just as bad as calling someone a bitch. This should clear things up right away.

1 Umbilical Nonseverance (Lotus Birth)

For those of you who really want to have a baby, but are also really into slasher movies, lotus birth might be for you. A lotus birth is the act of keeping the placenta attached after birth and letting it naturally fall off over the next few days. Some do this because they believe the "aura" of the child is still connected to the placenta, and as the placenta dies and falls off, that aura comes back to the child. Which sounds sort of like an adorable spirit blanket for newborns, until you realize what you're going to be dealing with while you're changing diapers and generally just trying to get through life:

Imagine trying to change your baby's diaper while it was still attached to what ultimately looks like a Jell-O/meat/blood casserole. Better yet, imagine trying to nurse it. The cord is so short that the vomit disc would have to sit on your lap. Still, it's a belief, and we're not here to point fingers and laugh at beliefs.

However, we will point fingers and laugh at people who do it to emulate American pioneers, who, according to them, "produced some of the hardiest children known in American history." They totally practiced lotus birth like all the time, guys. Never mind that the infant mortality rate in 1850 was 216.8 per 1,000, while in 2000, that number had dropped to 5.

Also, do we even need to say that carrying around a load of dead flesh for a few days stinks like you've been carrying around a load of dead flesh for a few days? That's OK, though, because practitioners have got that covered, man. Just rub some sea salt and lavender all up into that baby and ... well, you have a load of dead flesh that smells like it washed up on the beach of a hippie commune.

And just in case you're still considering it, consider the words of Patrick O'Brien, spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists: "If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby. The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. At the post-delivery stage, it has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue." So, there you have it. For people who really want to give their baby a spiritual yet infectious edge, lotus birth is your dream come true.

You can see more of Ian at Crazy Wicked Awesome, and Dawn Morrow at @DawnSmash. If you like reading and charity, enjoy The Four Humors: A Collection.

For more shitty parenting techniques, check out 8 Insane Ways Parents Are Politically Brainwashing Children and 7 Things 'Good Parents' Do (That Screw Up Kids For Life).

And stop by LinkSTORM to invent your own crazy parenting trend.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!