Best option by far is a cargo bike (long john, not long tail type). Trailer (Singletrailer) wasn’t bad. Hated the Ride Shotgun.
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I had a Kettler like this one. It was great. The trailer is good for very young children (<2) but you need to be very conscious of bumps and vibrations.
Just chiming in here to agree with everyone recommending cargo bikes. We have a Riese & Müller Load4 60, which is a full suspension frontloader. My daughter started riding in it around 12 months old and I was pretty nervous about crash safety, so I semi-permantently installed an actual baby car seat (with a proper safety rating) in the cargo bike’s front bucket. Now that she’s a little older I’ve installed a toddler car seat and my daughter wears a helmet as well (Giro makes a nice one in a toddler’s size).
Edited to add: The first time you ride a frontloader cargo bike it feels crazy, but you get used to it very quickly. It’s both more comfortable and much more engaging than riding a bike with a Thule or Burley trailer.
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This: FollowMe Tandem Review - Kids Ride Bikes on the back of this: Family Pack: Canopy /w Twin Seat & Honeycomb Board – Larry vs Harry?
Welcome to biking-with-kiddos!
Here’s a plug for using a front actual-child-seat, as opposed to a front-child-saddle. We used a Yepp Mini for our first kid (from 10 months til nearly-3 when he got too tall) and will use it again for our 2nd kid (about to start at 9 months).
The upside, like Shotgun/MacRide/doLittle, is that you have a shared experience with your kid (unlike trailer or rear seat, which we also have). Our older kid was very disappointed when he started staring at Daddy’s lower back. Plus, an actual front child seat straps your kid in, so works at younger ages.
The main downside, as Caley mentioned, is splaying your knees out to avoid the seat. More stack and (especially) more reach helps here, and of course your biomechanics may vary. But after a few months I simply avoided pushing high watts on climbs with the child seat.
We made sure our bars are wider than the seat, in case of the bike falling on its side with kid in the seat. This doesn’t protect against an endo, but we also aren’t taking it on mtb-trail-steep-grade descents.
We also find everyday trailer use to be a big faff, moreso for us with commute bikes & trailer in our building basement (which rules out weight of ebikes or the length of cargo bikes, for us).
Having said in another post how great it was to have a weehoo trailer, I’ll now disagree with myself and instead agree with Jonas. Cargo bike is a brilliant option, as it’s way more than just a kiddy carrier.