One reason I may never visit New York City

**Posted by Phineas

This is what happens when you live in such a cultural cocoon that there is no one to tell you what a stupid idea your stupid idea is:

File this under “EW!”:

When Jada Shapiro decided to raise her daughter from birth without diapers, for the most part, not everyone was amused. Ms. Shapiro scattered little bowls around the house to catch her daughter’s offerings, and her sister insisted that she use a big, dark marker to mark the bowls so that they could never find their way back to the kitchen.

β€œMy sister wasn’t a huge fan,” she said on Thursday.

But β€œelimination communication,” as the diaper-free method of child-rearing is called, is finding an audience in the hipper precincts of New York City.

Ms. Shapiro, who is a doula, a birth and child-rearing coach, says it is practically now a job qualification to at least be able to offer diaper-free training as an option to clients. Caribou Baby, an β€œeco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store” on the border of artsy Greenpoint and Williamsburg, has been drawing capacity crowds to its diaper-free β€œMeetups,” where parents exchange tips like how to get a baby to urinate on the street between parked cars.

Parents are drawn to the method as a way of preserving the environment from the ravages of disposable diapers, as well as reducing the laundering of cloth diapers and preventing diaper rash. Many of them like the thought that they are rediscovering an ancient practice used in other cultures, though they tend to gloss over the fact that many of those cultures had never heard of Pampers. But mostly, they say, they like feeling more in touch with their babies’ most intimate functions.

β€œI think for a lot of parents, the motivation is just to be more in tune with what their kids’ needs are,” Adriane Stare, proprietor of Caribou Baby and herself a diaper-free mother, said on Thursday, about a week after holding her most recent meetup. Another meeting was written about on Thursday on the news Web site dnainfo.com; the next is May 14.

This is one of those things that happened before Rome fell, right?

When I think of getting “in tune” with a child’s needs, I think about things like food, shelter, clothing, love, confidence-building, instill good values… Not teaching it the right way to take a whiz between parked cars.

(And what of the poor schmuck who later picks that route to get to his car?)

Nincompoopery like this makes me think of “Green warriors” who want to preserve rural villages from the ravages of technology, so they can continue to live in virtue, close to nature… and then you go ask someone in that same pesthole village if they’d like to have refrigerators, electric lights, air conditioning —and diapers!— and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts for asking and answer “Heck yes! When’s the delivery?”

Sometimes civilization is a good thing.

Even in Manhattan.

via Jonah Goldberg

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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