Competitive Motherhood

There is a phenomenon in the US (and probably the UK as well) that I like to call "competitive motherhood". Apparently this is a race and if we don't do it right, not only are our kids horribly deformed, we are horrible, weak, and evil people. You get breastfeeding/bottlefeeding, circumcision vs not for boys, and of course, diapers. This was reinforced by a recent thread on a message board that I'm on.

It started out with the regular, if boring, "disposables vs. cloth" debate. As usual, some weak person who can't just decide what they want to do wrote in and said "I'm looking for information on the pros and cons of cloth diapers and I wonder what you all do. I wonder what's the right thing to do?" The first response is usually the correct one ("hey, whatever you want"), followed by someone who goes through the list of the pros and cons of each. However, it never stops after those first two messages. About five or six women come on and talk about how great it is to use cloth and how bad it is for the environment to use disposables. Of course, maybe two or three of them actually HAVE kids yet. There's always the throwaway line of "to each their own, BUT..." with the tone of "if you're really that weak, I guess you can do it". Finally someone jumps in, calls BS on all the cloth diaper people and points out exactly how much energy and resources go in to creating and washing cloth diapers. The cloth diaper brigade turns on that person, and then they debate exactly HOW basic and friendly their diapers are. Organic cotton, not pre-folded because that's a cop out, made of twigs and air, yada, yada, yada. You get some "I win because I use cloth"/ "I win because I use disposables and I live in the real world" posts, and eventually it peters out.

Today, however, someone totally outclassed the competition. "Well," this poster said, "I don't see why we need to use diapers at all. I don't plan to" (note the future tense referring to their maternal status). The poster proceeds to go on and discuss this process called "elimination communication" where a parent does nothing but sit and stare at their child, waiting for 'that face' and running over and holding them over the toilet to go. All the time. I had heard about it a while back and laughed it out of the park. I have actually used it a couple of times, but only when he's in the tub and he makes that face and I see a bubble starting to come up in the tub. I have hurled the kid out of the tub and held him over the toilet -- not because I give a rat's ass about the environment or holistically rearing my child, but I do NOT want to have to scrub and bleach out the baby tub again.

Of course, the people trying desperately to win the Mommy competition start talking about how this is used in about 1/4 of the world, and why are we so repressed about toilet functions. Someone finally pointed out that it's probably because 1/4 of the world is so damn poor they can't get anything to use as a diaper and haven't any water facilities to clean them with, and because in those same cultures, often the entire landscape is a big toilet. Then they talk about finding proper "progressive" daycares that are going to work with them to do EC (most health codes for daycares outright forbid this kind of thing), or they will hire someone to come in their home to take care of their child who will definitely toe the line on this and every other parenting dictate. (On what you can afford to pay? Good luck with that. Mary Poppins isn't out there, and even if she was, she'd be diapering the heck out of the kids)

See, this is why I proudly wear the badge of The World's Worst Mother. Who has time to worry about this shit?