Disclaimers
Shannon and I were chatting the other night when I noticed she had written a lovely entry reguarding some positives of cloth diapering and I noticed (since she posted it in her livejournal as well) that so many people comment with why they do not cloth diaper. She wasn’t attacking them or saying this is best ‘sposies suck, yet people always end up getting defensive or making excuses. So later on she was saying how she needed to post a disclaimer on that it wasn’t an attack on parents that used disposable diapers and I kinda went a wee touch ranty on how it seems like AP’ers are always putting disclaimers on entries reguarding breastfeeding, cloth diapers, no vax, no CIO, no spanking, etc yet mainstream parents can post about smacking their child, letting them cry in a crib, giving every shot known to man, and you don’t see them posting a disclaimer.
Why do we feel that we have to apologize for how we choose to raise our children? Why do people make excuses on why they don’t use this method or that method. Why do they lie? Why not say “I don’t want to breastfeed/cloth diaper/whatever else because I’m lazy/don’t want to/didn’t do the research/don’t care/physically can’t” instead of “but I don’t have my own washer and dryer! I’m poor! Omgosh it’s so far awayyyy” or “My breasts are SEXUAL no CHILD shall TOUCH them!” yet they sure as hell weren’t saying that when their child was being pushed through their vagina to give birth, guess that place wasn’t sexual at the time huh. (Oh yes I am actually not as ranty as I was last night trust me)
I mean I understand it… not everyone is going to raise their child what I call “naturally”. I would choose locally grown fruits and veggies over ones brought in mass produced from across the country. I choose to give my son breastmilk because it’s been proven to be healthier, actually so I don’t turn this into a super duper huge entry, read 101 Reasons to Breastfeed.I chose to cloth diaper my son because I dislike being so disposable, having this weird gel by his regions, the fact that a diaper (yes I did this) can hold 4 cups of fluid. Something is very weird about that. He has never nor will he ever (unless he chooses to) have vaccinations. I don’t understand how people can give a child freshly out of the womb a Hepatitis B vaccination… I didn’t realise newborns were having unprotected sex and using dirty needles. (of course if the child was born from a mother who had hep B then that is a different story) National Vaccine Information Center is an interesting site with a lot of information.
If you start discussing politics, music, movies, abortions, religion, a lot of people preface it with “this is my opinion if you don’t like it, leave!” which is basically a disclaimer, if we really felt we had freedom on our sites, why do we have to give warnings and excuses on what we say?
So, why do you censor yourself? Why do you put disclaimers up? We all say “it’s our blog we can say whatever we want” yet post a billion disclaimers and censor ourselves.
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I agree with you!!! and I haave ranted about the same thing many times… I am trying to not post on Foums anymore because each time I am proud about something (breastfeeding etc) someone always get defensive about it… That’s the reason I started my blog…
I’m going to try to find a way to put this into words without sounding snarky or bitchy, because that’s not my intent at all. I think it’s great that you aren’t mainstream and I think it’s AWESOME that you’re passionate about doing the things you think are best for your child.
I agree that you shouldn’t have to censor yourself or put up a disclaimer. Nobody should. But statements like these:
“Why do people make excuses on why they don
Sarah -
I don’t have any children of my own so I will not comment on whether there is a benefit to doing things one way or the other. I know how my mother raised me and I am sure I will follow in her footsteps since she did an awesome job at raising both me and my sister. But those kind of decisions will be made later in my life.
You are correct: this is your blog, do whatever you want with it. Be opinionated, blunt, sometimes outright offensive because you have that right. However I realize that every person reading my blog might not agree with me, might think I’m wrong, might take offense to my comments even though I am not directing them at any person individually. I can’t explain how I feel about it as eloquently as I am sure many could… but I look at the web just as I look at real life. A group of people who are linked in weird ways but who are, for the most part, complete strangers. I would never say something extremely blunt to someone whom I did not know. It is just my not in my nature to be that way. So knowing that those who view my site don’t necesarily know me or how I am, I wouldn’t want people to misconstrue my statements. I don’t care if somebody agrees or disagrees with me — variety makes life interesting. But I don’t want somebody to twist what I am saying into something it is not because they don’t know me, my past, or my background… and I have found that powerful stances on certain issues have been known to do that. Disclaimers are different for everybody, I really don’t think they are all the same… I rarely use them, but when I do it is more of a “Okay I am about to say something that you may not agree with. I’m okay if you disagree with me and want to state it here. But take me for what I’m worth because I am not going to sugar coat this for you.” Do I censor what I write? No. I write what I would write anyway regardless of any sort of preface. But do I warn people what kind of argument they may involve themselves in? Sometimes. I just don’t really see this as either a positive or negative thing.
Your entry made me think though, and I like that in a blog. Take care and regardless of what anybody says — you raise your child doing what you feel is best… and as long as you are a loving parent doing what YOU think is in your child’s best interests, then I don’t think anybody has room to critisize.
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copy/paste –didn’t realize i was still reading it from lj– hA!
“I totally agree with you. I don’t have anything else informative or witty to say, You said it all. Just wanted to make it known, I’m on your side. –winks-”