Queercents

I knew that having a baby would change my life in unforseen ways, but there’s one aspect of modern parenting that I was totally unprepared for. Like Mr. Robinson in The Graduate, I have one word for you, potential parents: Plastics.

Plastic toys. Plastic bouncers. Plastic bottles. And of course, plastic diapers. If you don’t make a conscious effort to do otherwise, your house, your baby, and your life will soon be coated in a shiny, non-biodegradable plastic coating.

So why resist? Why not just enjoy that plastic rainforest bouncer? It’s cute, cheap, and shiny (like my ex-…but that’s another tragic story).

Well, because if we keep buying plastic rainforests, there won’t be any of the real rainforest left. There are two reasons to minimize our consumption of plastics: environmental and health-related. The environmental problems plastic creates are numerous and well-documented. Plastic is hard to recycle efficiently; most plastics are produced from oil, a limited resource; plastics are not biodegradable. The health problems linked to the use of plastics are more open to debate, but recent research suggests that one of the chemicals in most plastics, BPA, is especially toxic to babies. Moreover, BPA is leached out by the heating process. So when you sterilize your baby’s plastic bottles, you’re also releasing BPA. Yuck! Read the rest of this entry »

Parenting is expensive. (Duh!)

Over the course of a lifetime, it costs about a million per kid—four million if you do it the fancy shmancy way. And it’s wasteful: I’m not just talking about those evil plastic diapers, but the mountains of plastic toys, soccer fields of onesies, and carloads full of sundries that come with a baby. Then later there’s education, dentistry, more clothes, more toys…

Of course neither the cost nor the environmental impact deters us parents. The other side of ‘impact’ is that we are bringing new life, new joy, new possibilities into the world. Our childrens’ potential for positive impact upon the world is limitless.

Priceless, in fact.

So how do we reduce the yucky kind of impact, and enhance the good kind?
Read the rest of this entry »

First, a confession: I, your left-leaning, recycle-happy, Al Gore-loving, hemp bag-carrying Queercents mom, use disposable diapers. Though I am well aware of the hideous environmental impact of disposables, and I fear there’s a landfill somewhere with our daughter’s name on it, I really had no choice. No, really! Hear me out: we are living in a rural farmhouse that lacks the proper wiring for a washer/dryer. There is no diaper service available in our area. After some soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that hand-washing poopy dipes might be the urine-stained straw to break this particular mama camel’s back. (Okay, that’s one of my clunkier metaphors, but you get the [poopy] picture.)

The arguments for using cloth diapers are persuasive. They are far cheaper, less destructive to the environment, don’t expose your baby to numerous toxins, and so on. If you have a diaper service in your area and/or have easy access to a washer-dryer, then I do encourage you to at least try to go the plastic-free route.

It’s better: for the baby, and for the environment. And for your pocketbook, too.

However, some of us simply can’t—or won’t—use cloth. So what’s an environmentally conscious, money conscious, chemical conscious, you-name-it conscious queer parent to do? Well, here are some ways that I’ve found to save money and reduce the environmental impact of your little pooper’s waste products. Read the rest of this entry »