We describe a method for calculating the implicit value of a young child's life to his or her mother as revealed by her decisions about child car safety seat (car seat hereafter) usage.' We present a first-ever willingness to pay estimate of this valuation. Previous willingness-to-pay estimates of the value of a life, whether obtained from labor market or consumption behavior, are measures based on self-valuation [23; 13; 3; 14; 12]. Because of gaps in our knowledge of the effectiveness and usage patterns of car seats, we discuss the sensitivity of this estimate to variations in key parameters. Our willingness to pay approach provides a more satisfactory estimate than other methods for imputing the value of a young child's life: the cost of raising a child, the child's discounted future earnings, and the imputed value of an adult's life from risk of death on the job, as in Dillingham [12]. The first approach substantially underestimates the value of a child's life; the second method is unreliable because few human capital investments have been made; the last method cannot be used because the child has yet to make any job choices. There are several reasons for interest in the value a mother places on her child's life. One reason is to compare this valuation with the mother's self valuation. This comparison is an empirical issue because the valuation of the child's life can arguably be below or above the self valuation. Narrow self interest suggests that a mother would value her own life more highly than her child's life. Survey results reported in Jones-Lee, Hammerton and Philips [17] suggest a valuation of the lives of friends and relatives as low as 40% of the value of one's own life. Needleman [20] studies the refusal rates of kidney donors to determine that the valuation of the kidney patient's life by a close relative (not just the mother) is approximately 45% of the relative's self valuation. A