About this Blog
Momfidence! cheers on commonsense parenting and sighs at the rest. How to worry less, wing it more. A.k.a. parenting by the seat of my mid-rise mom jeans.
About Paula SpencerI'm the author of Momfidence! An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting, and a mom of four in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (where you can't even buy Oreos at the two wholesome groceries nearest to my home). 
A rare foto in which all six Spencers face the camera! by Charles Harris
Some Kindred Blogs
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Forget Newborn Footprints; Think of the Carbon Footprint!August 18, 2008
The green-family debates over disposable diapers vs. cotton, or paper vs. plastic, or plastic vs. glass just got more contentious and ridiculous: large families vs. small.
Yes, large families -- that would be more than one or two kids, apparently -- are bad for the environment. That's the basis on which an editorial in British Medical Journal proposes discouraging patients from having too many kids. No pressure, mind you, just a kindly Dr. Welby lecture on how that third or fourth pregnancy is the moral equivalent of buying an SUV. I'm sure the Third World nations are all going to jump right on this bandwagon! (Er, station wagon?). If geopolitics is a giant Risk board -- and Western population growth is already comparatively stunted, compared with the breeding masses of the Middle East, India, et al -- discouraging more human capital is not what one would call a wise game move. Besides which my four children raise my odds that someone will look after me in my dotage. And they're swell company now. Siblings also have always seemed to me rather more self-sufficient and less self-obsessed than onlies, though I speak only from biased observation. Just an editorial (in a prestigious medical journal)? First comes the suggestion, then it's taken up by the New York Times, then some self-righteous spotted-owl lover initiates legislation...and before you know it you're living in China having your periods monitored by the Party and watching perfect little girls lip-synching for the bucktoothed talented ones because now you live in a place where appearances and empty gestures matter more than content and commonsense. Meanwhile maybe that third (or sixth) child is the one who would have invented hot-air powered cars. |
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