I try to be an environmental sort of fellow, an eco-friendly kind of person, a so-called “Green” in Conservative parlance, but at a certain point, certain people of a certain disposition might end up counting their chickens and their eggs and then say, certainly, “I give up.”
Per my parenting adventures, I would like to say that I started off valiantly. The idea of modern-day cloth diapers, eco-ass-wipes, eco-ass-lotions, eco-laundry-detergent, eco-baby-clothes, eco-frankly-nearly-God-damn-everything was all very attractive.
And we like the eco (albeit non-cloth) diapers we ended up choosing. We really do. One reason being that, unlike more conventional diapers, the eco-diapers contain no chlorine in their construction (chlorine being a chemical element which often contributes to diaper rash).
But in all honesty, our heretofore-unnamed eco-diapers don’t, well, hold up as well as one might, well, hope.
Which isn’t a concern during the day. This just means that you have to change diapers more frequently than those parents who use more conventional diapers. So, for example, instead of changing five Pampers a day, you change seven. Or instead of six Huggies, you change eight. Or instead of nine Luvs, you change twelve. Or instead of ten…well frankly, if you’re changing more than ten diapers in a day, you’re probably having a pretty shitty day anyway and an extra diaper here or there won’t matter all that much.
Ultimately, though, it was the overnight stretch with the eco-diaper that became the kicker for me.
Every night, overnight, my dear little darling would compromise her diaper, her onesie, her pajamas, her sheet, her mattress-topper, and, sometimes, even her bedfellows (see: stuffed animals), and the whole thing would naturally necessitate fairly frequent visits to the laundry room.
And herein lies the rub: What is an eco-friendly fellow to do?
Well, I could continue with the status quo: I could keep using countless diapers and I could keep collecting soiled bedding and I could keep doing laundry every day (sometimes twice a day) and I could keep putting said laundry into respective drying machines. All of this all, however, makes one start to wonder—what with the water usage and the energy usage and the poisoning of the water table with laundry detergent and (God forbid!) the bleach—is this actually better for the environment?
Or, I could start using those non-eco-friendly conventional diapers, those so-called “overnight” diapers, which promise to stay less compromised, and thusly less likely to soil accompanying clothing and bedding and stuffed animal bedfellows, and, thusly, create fewer laundry loads, which would thusly waste less water and use less energy, and, thusly, make less of an imprint upon our environment, even if that chlorine-laden eco-hating overnight plastic diaper I’d strapped to my daughter’s ass just before bedtime ultimately finds itself tangled within a seven-mile floating plastic island that’s currently sailing about the South Pacific.
And, frankly, all of these personal parental decisions are at least somewhat contingent on, 1) the fact that my daughter pees a lot overnight, and 2) I hate laundry.
It almost makes a parent start to think that kids are, inherently, anti-Green.
Every Wednesday, Jason brings us stories from the front lines of Manhattan childrearing. Hungry for more parenting adventures? Check out Jason’s blog The Recent Paterfamilias. Have a question or a topic you’d like to ask a New York stay-at-home dad? Email it to emily@askanewyorker.com.
