The sight of a hole in the side of a Boeing 737 Max airplane earlier this month resurrected, among other questions, an old debate: Is it really a good idea to hold your baby in your arms when you fly?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) strongly recommends that you get a separate, secured seat for even a very young child below the age of 2 — but they haven’t banned the practice of carrying your child on your lap in your own seat.

As the FAA comes under (justified) fire for being too lenient about increasing signs of lax practices and problems at Boeing, I’ve seen this policy criticized. “A kid being held would have been torn from the hands of their parents, and they would have been sucked out the plane,” aviation safety expert Kwasi Adjekum told the Washington Post, referring to what happened to Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5. The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly recommended that the FAA ban lap children.

But I actually want to go to bat for the FAA here — I think their policy of advising against “lap children” but not banning them gets exactly right a really important, frequently neglected aspect of regulation. And it’s one other regulatory agencies could learn from.

Regulation and our notion of responsibility

Say I’m a regulator responsible for an environmental impact review of a new apartment building in a major city. It’s my job........

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