Doing the best you can with what you have

In an effort to make friends and find things to fill my long stay-home days, I joined a local  online parents forum. After spending some time on the various boards and debating whether or not to attend their events, I realized that simply being a parent is not really enough in common. So I joined the natural and attachment-parenting forum, and confidently headed out to my first group playdate. When that didn’t go well I gave up. The host’s house seemed normal enough. Almost too normal. I don’t know why I was somehow expecting a yurt in a field with clotheslines and chickens. I wanted it to be more than just a little different, not just a rather large, new suburban two-story colonial with a large backyard. There were about six or seven moms there, and it was nice that they were all oohing and ahhing that my son was already walking at nine months, and refreshing to be around a group of women who were all freely breastfeeding their babies and preschoolers (without those stupid blankets over their heads).

But oh, the stares and gasps when I mentioned I bought disposable diapers for my son’s first month because I didn’t want to be overwhelmed with washing diapers on top of getting used to being a mom. You’d have thought I said I spent my free time pushing over baby penguins. The fact is, yes it would have been better for the environment if I’d used only cloth ever, but my own sanity had been tried enough. This nouveau-riche natural living movement is great and all if it means more cloth diapers, more breastfeeding, and more demand for local and organic goods; but if it also promotes a sense of judgment and moral superiority towards those who make different choices, then I’m not sure it’s being all it can be as a movement. Promoting breastfeeding is awesome, and really important, but if it means women feel like utter failures when they can’t, it’s gone too far. Plus I’m not sure all these well-to-do new-found environmentalists are really getting the point, or doing the best they could. But far be it from me to pass judgment.