Most parents would do just about anything to start their kids off right in life and in China, that includes putting corrective molds on babies’ heads to make them more round. It seems round heads are a big deal in the country and rounded skulls are considered the beauty standard. So now there’s a trend for parents to buy special helmets to shape their babies’ still-developing skulls into a more aesthetically pleasing shape.
These helmets are strapped onto the tiny tots for hours at a time to prevent them from being flatter in the back. The “South China Morning Post” reports that one mom shared her quest for “head-shape correction” for her baby on a social media site in the country, writing that she took her seven-month-old daughter to get the custom gear, despite her family’s protests. “I have a flat head,” she shared in a since-deleted post. “I don’t want my kid to grow up and regret this part of herself.”
And some of these shape-shifting helmets can be pretty pricey. According to Chinese news site Sohu, a head mold can cost around $43-hundred. Parents are also using head-shape-correcting pillows and sleeping mats to make sure their infants don’t get a flat head. But round heads haven’t always been the rage and this desire for a spherical-shaped skull is actually a new fad in China. A few decades back, people there considered flat heads and large foreheads a sign of good luck and some parents made their kids sleep on books or wooden boards to make the back of their heads flatter.
Source: Insider