NEEDED: Marriage Ref!!

Fight: Stephanie, aka Mommy, wants our wee little one to grow up and be strong and healthy....without brain damage. Mommy wants her children to wear a helmet when riding a bike (and skateboarding, rollerblading, etc.). Simple, cheap, easy way of preventing a possible head injury or death by wearing one and definitely won't "interfere" with the bike riding fun. Some additional statistics:

• Non-helmeted riders are 14 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than helmeted riders
• Helmets can prevent 75% of bicycle fatalities among children
• 85-88% of critical head and brain injuries can be prevented through the use of a bicycle helmet
• By wearing a helmet, an injury can be prevented every 4 minutes
• A bicyclist died every six hours in the year 2002
• In the year 2000, 90% of bicycle fatalities occurred to riders not wearing helmets

http://www.thinkfirst.org/teens/BicycleSafety.asp.

Adam, aka Daddy, doesn't feel that protecting our child against possible brain damage or death by wearing a helmet is something that he does not want our children to participate in. Wearing a helmet will make them "soft".

I'm sure almost everyone reading this never wore a helmet as a kid. But then again, how many people didn't wear seat belts in the car either. I can understand that I was being unreasonable if I was asking my kid to wear a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, hearing protection, safety glasses and a harness to prevent the kid from falling altogether - but I'm not trying to prevent the kid from falling and scraping his knee...I'm trying to prevent a head injury.

So.....taking into account that I'm only growing a fig-size child at the moment....it might take about 6 years to settle this debate, so I figured I'd start thinking about it now. Oh...and the fact that we have had this argument for about 2 years already (before we were even planning to have kids). Your thoughts?? Helmet and safe kid?? No helmet and possible head injury??