dancingsinging (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancingsinging) wrote2012-06-08 09:58 pm
dancingsinging) wrote2012-06-08 09:58 pm
Diapers and class and the environment
So I found these awesome gDiapers on line. They are basically a cloth/disposable hybrid, where you stick a disposable liner in a snap-in plastic thing in a cloth outer thing. The part that you throw away is compostable and totally biodegradable. The cloth cover thing is super cute looking and you can even buy these adorable little t-shirts that match. Even though they have ones that are pretty clearly for girls and ones for boys, they aren't horribly gendered-looking--I'd put a kid of either sex in either style. Also, the company is all wonderful and supportive of their employees who have children with a child care center right there and policies for time off of work for sick kids and school plays.
It seems like a perfect solution to the whole thing with disposable diapers being the 3rd largest contributor to landfills worldwide, being used by 5% of the world's population. (I still have some cloth diapers in my garage that I was going to use with kid #1 until I discovered how much free time I had for washing diapers as a new parent. I know that old-fashioned cloth diapers are cheap and--depending on what you do to get your wash water and where the drain goes to--fine for the environment. But they are just not going to work for me. Yay to the people who make it work. Seriously.)
But the problem is that Spouse hates the idea. Because the little biodegradable inserts are $.39 each and costco diapers range from $.24 to $.31 each. (The little covers range from $13 to $20 depending on how many you buy at a time and how cute they are. But that's a one-time expense at each size, so I'm ignoring it for now.) So, anyway, at 60 diapers/week (a number I got from the gDiapers site; I have no idea how accurate it is) it's an extra $9/week to diaper in a way that doesn't horrify me when I think about it too much. That's, like, going out to lunch once. To me, a total and complete no-brainer, given our privileged economic situation right now.
But the thing is, it is NOT a no-brainer to Spouse. And a few years ago, I think I would have gotten all mad at him for being a tight wad and being all uncaring about the Important Environment and the Important Mommy Feeling of Cute Baby Bottom. But I've spent a lot of time in the past couple of years thinking about class and reflecting about how growing up dead broke and working class influenced my husband. And I can kind of see how, to him, it would be morally distasteful to spend any amount of extra money on stupid fru-fru yuppie diapers. Especially because they look all cute and, well, yuppie.
And then I'm starting to wonder about why this thing is so important to me. Is the emotional oomph behind my opinion really about the environment, or is it about class? If these magic biodegradable diapers looked exactly like the ugly costco disposables, would I be willing to spend more for them? (Yes, but as much more?) I know that plastic in landfills is bad, but over my lifetime, am I doing more damage with ziplock bags than I could ever do with diapers? And if the environment were really that important to me, wouldn't I be driving that biodiesel or electric car I've been thinking about for the last four years or so, or maybe even be riding my bike? (Okay, the bike thing and public transportation is complicated because of the city I live in, but still.)
It's weird, with this baby #2, I so don't give a shit about a bunch of stuff I really cared about with baby #1. Like, I would never spend $300 on a car seat, or however much I can't remember but it was a lot on a stroller. I'm happy with used clothes; I don't care about cute coordinating hats. But somehow, the damned diapers are important to me.
I guess the stuff I obsessed about last time was also all caught up in class markers (which is funny, since we had so much more to struggle with financially then). I somehow associated the class-related stuff with safety and security for the baby and it really made me feel better to buy it all before the baby came. This time, I don't have much of that, except that the dang gDiapers feel really, really important. So confusing.
[Edited to add: Spouse just pointed out that $9/week over three years is $1400. Much more than the overpriced brand-name stroller. So I guess it's not such a dismissable amount of money after all. Also, he expresses skepticism that the gDiaper would absorb as well as the newfangled ones filled with Magic Pee Absorption Pellets. He may have a point there--last time we got to a point where we were barely changing diapers more than a couple times a day and baby stayed dry.]
It seems like a perfect solution to the whole thing with disposable diapers being the 3rd largest contributor to landfills worldwide, being used by 5% of the world's population. (I still have some cloth diapers in my garage that I was going to use with kid #1 until I discovered how much free time I had for washing diapers as a new parent. I know that old-fashioned cloth diapers are cheap and--depending on what you do to get your wash water and where the drain goes to--fine for the environment. But they are just not going to work for me. Yay to the people who make it work. Seriously.)
But the problem is that Spouse hates the idea. Because the little biodegradable inserts are $.39 each and costco diapers range from $.24 to $.31 each. (The little covers range from $13 to $20 depending on how many you buy at a time and how cute they are. But that's a one-time expense at each size, so I'm ignoring it for now.) So, anyway, at 60 diapers/week (a number I got from the gDiapers site; I have no idea how accurate it is) it's an extra $9/week to diaper in a way that doesn't horrify me when I think about it too much. That's, like, going out to lunch once. To me, a total and complete no-brainer, given our privileged economic situation right now.
But the thing is, it is NOT a no-brainer to Spouse. And a few years ago, I think I would have gotten all mad at him for being a tight wad and being all uncaring about the Important Environment and the Important Mommy Feeling of Cute Baby Bottom. But I've spent a lot of time in the past couple of years thinking about class and reflecting about how growing up dead broke and working class influenced my husband. And I can kind of see how, to him, it would be morally distasteful to spend any amount of extra money on stupid fru-fru yuppie diapers. Especially because they look all cute and, well, yuppie.
And then I'm starting to wonder about why this thing is so important to me. Is the emotional oomph behind my opinion really about the environment, or is it about class? If these magic biodegradable diapers looked exactly like the ugly costco disposables, would I be willing to spend more for them? (Yes, but as much more?) I know that plastic in landfills is bad, but over my lifetime, am I doing more damage with ziplock bags than I could ever do with diapers? And if the environment were really that important to me, wouldn't I be driving that biodiesel or electric car I've been thinking about for the last four years or so, or maybe even be riding my bike? (Okay, the bike thing and public transportation is complicated because of the city I live in, but still.)
It's weird, with this baby #2, I so don't give a shit about a bunch of stuff I really cared about with baby #1. Like, I would never spend $300 on a car seat, or however much I can't remember but it was a lot on a stroller. I'm happy with used clothes; I don't care about cute coordinating hats. But somehow, the damned diapers are important to me.
I guess the stuff I obsessed about last time was also all caught up in class markers (which is funny, since we had so much more to struggle with financially then). I somehow associated the class-related stuff with safety and security for the baby and it really made me feel better to buy it all before the baby came. This time, I don't have much of that, except that the dang gDiapers feel really, really important. So confusing.
[Edited to add: Spouse just pointed out that $9/week over three years is $1400. Much more than the overpriced brand-name stroller. So I guess it's not such a dismissable amount of money after all. Also, he expresses skepticism that the gDiaper would absorb as well as the newfangled ones filled with Magic Pee Absorption Pellets. He may have a point there--last time we got to a point where we were barely changing diapers more than a couple times a day and baby stayed dry.]