The average cost of a baby's first year is at least $8,000 - 10,000. After looking at all this cost and how quickly things add up, it's no wonder people are waiting longer and longer to have children and having fewer kids when they get around to starting a family. Babies are expensive. It's especially intimidating for yuppies used to maintaining a lifestyle that a baby could really cramp.
Diapers are going to run a little over $1,000 for the first year and let's face it, there is little chance that your child will be potty trained and out of diapers at 12 months. So, assuming at 30 months that you've managed to potty train your child, you're spending between $2,000 and $3,000 on diapers alone. This is assuming baby doesn't have any allergic reactions to the more conservatively priced diapers and you're not having to spend even more on specialty diapers.
Babies have to be diapered, there's no debate there and anyone who would argue this point with you doesn't have white carpet. That being said, there's really no way around this cost is there? Oh but there is. Most people hear of cloth diapering and automatically think of bulky rubber shorts and a lot of hassle and naturally think that disposable diapers are a far better option. But the rubber shorts haven't been around for over a decade. How much money could cloth diapering really save anyway? Well, over the course of a child's life in diapers, cloth diapering will probably save around $1,500 - 2,500. And gone are the days of rubber shorts and inconvenience.
That's right, you can spend a total of $250-500 and have a child diapered from birth to age two or three. Even better is that if properly cared for, these diapers will probably last through the next kid as well.
Of course, disposable diapers are convenient, there's no doubt about that but cloth diapers aren't far behind at all anymore. The most inconvenient part of cloth diapering is washing the diapers and provided you buy enough to begin with, you're only looking at another 2 loads of laundry per week and these don't have to ironed and folded.
Those are only the financial benefits of cloth diapering. If you're trying to be "green", cloth diapering is the only way to go. There are about 18 billion disposable diapers that get chucked into landfills every year in the U.S. alone. Disposable diapers aren't biodegradable and so just sit there, full of hazardous waste in their landfill. The estimate is that it takes anywhere from 250- 500 years for a disposable diaper to decompose. What about cloth diapers? Well, once you've worn them out on your child, you can use them as cleaning rags. Cloth diapering is by far the greenest option for diapering.
The benefits of cloth diapering are adding up pretty quickly here and we haven't even talked about how great they are for baby! Disposable diapers are full of chemicals to enhance their absorbency, no surprise there. What most people don't know is that these aren't just any chemicals, but pollutants linked to hormone problems, toxic shock syndrome and even cancer. Now, the risks these pose to children probably isn't terribly high on the whole, but why take that risk? Who wants to expose their baby to even trace amounts of a chemical considered by the EPA to be the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals? Oh, by the way, some of these chemicals are banned... just not in the U.S. Cloth diapers are entirely toxin free and if you want to get really serious, they can even be bought made of organically-grown cotton or bamboo. Even if the risks of baby ending up with cancer because of their diapers isn't high, many babies develop allergies to some of the components used in disposable diapers. Cloth diapers will at least cut down on diaper rash. If you want to get really serious about saving money, just think of how much less you'll spend on diaper rash ointment every year - that stuff is not cheap. Not that this should influence anyone's decision to cloth diaper but have I mentioned how adorable they are? There are more fabrics and patterns to choose from than anyone will even have time to go through
So, benefits of cloths diapering over disposables - they're environmentally friendly, healthier for baby and will save gobs of money. This is only cloth diapering, we haven't even touched on the many other ways to save thousands on having a baby. Maybe if we can cut down on all the costs of having a baby, people will realize they have fewer excuses not to reproduce.
"God blessed them saying, 'Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.'" Gen. 1:28
This inconsistency is irrational and illogical. Women who lose their children through miscarriage feel an enormous loss because of the loss of that child's life. Women who go through abortion, who are often coerced and pressured into making that decision, naturally feel the same sort of loss.
Instead of performing 1,400,000 abortions every year, nearly 3600 per day, the medical community could be focusing their resources on preventing miscarriages and in solving the hidden causes of miscarriage. The $300 million given each year to the nation's largest abortionist, Planned Parenthood, would go a long way to advance the medical research necessary to help end miscarriage.
Two articles both from Science Daily which demonstrate the hypocrisy of the abortion industry:
The Economics of Life By Marty Andrade
marty@massprolife.org
Economics is a lesson in obfuscation. The clarity and wonderment and morality of Adam Smith devolved into the meaningless sophistry, in the form of mathematical equations, of neo-Keynesianism. What was originally a philosophic investigation into the origins of wealth has turned into an enterprise for putting the scientific stamp of approval on a particular public policy or political philosophy.
Reality, however, will let itself be known, often in the face of elegant sophistry. In this case the sophistry is depopulation. If we can eliminate some people, we can all be rich. It is a myth some economists have been touting for a hundred years. You could interpret some of the theories of Reverend Thomas Malthus to implicitly support this hypothesis. He warned the human race was destined for perpetual poverty because its population would always expand beyond available resources.
Malthus also suggested plagues, wars and other disasters concealed this fact, being an inevitable result of nature. In the Middle Ages the Black Death spread throughout Europe, killing tens of millions and eliminating about one-third of the population. In the centuries following the plague, western civilization experienced the renaissance and reformation, as well as movement away from feudalism towards what we understand as modern capitalism. To Malthus this was nature in action.
The human mind loves making connections, making the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy one of the most prolific of all logical fallacies in human discourse. So it's no surprise to find some people credit the disappearance of thirty to fifty million Europeans to the positive changes made in the latter half of the last millennium. The argument is quite simple, society only has so much stuff. If people die, then there's more stuff to go around. Therefore people get richer.
The source of all modern knowledge, Wikipedia, discusses this idea in its article on the Black Death. Unlike my middle school teacher who first presented the idea of dead people equals more stuff for everyone, Wikipedia treats the subject with some skepticism. It acknowledges there were some positive outcomes after the plague peaked in the fifteenth century. However, it does not claim the positive outcomes outweighed the bad. But as we know some people did try to put these ideas into practice.
John Maynard Keynes was a 20th century economist who pushed his ideas of state-control over the economy and decisions of citizens, and also advocated for the state reallocating resources in order to promote better decisions. Keynes felt that economic action was more important than specific value-decisions, and as a result helps lay the foundation for the twisted idea that less people means more resources for those who remain.
Rev. Thomas Malthus is famous for his "Malthusian" theories about population limits within the environment. His dire predictions about the limitations on human population have erroneously lead many into believing "the earth cannot handle" more people. Malthus predicted that Britain would never be able to support much more than 11 million souls. Today, Britain has a population of 62 million.
The Black Death was a plague in Europe that killed between 75-200 million people, decimating the lives and cultures of those who suffered through it.
We said that we would not go away - let's show them that with a good
turnout at the city council meeting at Fitchburg City Hall, 718 Main Street,
Fitchburg !
Time- Tuesday, March 16 at 7:30 PM
Zoning petition to be on agenda. Breaking news - councilors need by law
to pass onto Planning Board because petition is from citizens.
Tell all your friends, relatives and neighbors to come from all across the state.
Thank-you,
Chris Hanley, Chair, Fitchburg, Leominster Chapter, MCFL
Conference call tonight, Sunday 7PM
The Dial-in # is: (712) 432-0600
Access code: 100859#
Planned Parenthood has been given a $387,000 federal grant to provide Health Awareness Services in an office at 317 Main St., Fitchburg, MA. Six members of the Fitchburg City council have "slammed" these plans according to a Fitchburg Sentenal report,
http://www.sentinelandenterpri... specifically voting "to draft a resolution urging Planned Parenthood to abandon plans to open a Fitchburg chapter."
We agree with this resolution, and with Councilor-at-large Dean Tran, who said "there already exist many social services providing help to women and we do not need another one in Fitchburg." Tran wants to combat the "reputation of Fitchburg as the epicenter of social services."
But more importantly, we disagree with the Planned Parenthood concept of "health awareness." When we see the Planned Parenthood signs and their hot pink Toyota Scion with the tag line "Sexual Health Matters" we want to know exactly what they mean. We get that meaning from their Web site teenwire.com, where such topics as "Will the Gyno (gynocologist) tell your mom that you are having sex?" assure young girls not to worry, but to check first and avoid those gynocologists who might inform their parents. The "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning" link claims that we are either gay or bisexual from birth, yet we may take a long time to question our sexual orientation. In other words, try it, all ot it.
Planned Parenthood has had a generation to work to reduce sexually transmitted desease, and we do not believe their approach has worked. We believe the promotion of promiscuity, the mocking of monogamy, and the band-aid of safe-sex has been totally ineffective. Couple this colossal ineffectiveness with the fact that the Fitchburg Planned Parenthood office will be a feeder to the Worcester Planned Parenthood abortion center and you have all the reason Fitchburg needs to keep Planned Parenthood out of town.
Please call Fitchburg City councilors and urge them to keep Planned Parenthood's promiscuity out of town:
Tom Conry - 978-348-1799
Rosemary Reynolds - 978-345-7583
Marcus DiNatale - 978-790-3595
Stephan Hay - 978-348-1263
Dean Tran - 78-353-8726
David Clark - 978-343-0895
Norman Boisvert - 978-342-9860
Joel Kaddy - 978-342-1442
Kevin Starr - 978-855-8033
Joseph Solomito - 978-342-4108
Jody Joseph - 978-343-4539
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