One of the objections I sometimes hear to parents having more than a few children is the expense of diapering. Of course, folks are referring to paper, disposable diapers here, for the most part. But even cloth diapering can be expensive, especially if you purchase the fancy fitted diapers and soaker covers.
Fortunately, an enthusiast of cloth diapering has put together a website with how-to’s and some free patterns for different kinds of diapers and soakers available on it. She also sells ready-made patterns for diapers, soakers, baby carriers, cloth dolls, and other cloth items useful to women.
Her instructions for the most budget conscious among us can be found here: Sew a Diaper Stash for $30 or Less http://fernandfaerie.com/frugaldiapering.html There are other pages that show how to sew various kinds of diapers and covers as well.
Her commercial patterns are available here: http://fernandfaerie.com, and she offers commercial licenses to ladies who want to produce them as a cottage industry.
I have no personal knowledge of her business side, but it looks good. And her freebies are awesome.
God bless,
Laurel
Note: Just because we recommend a resource doesn’t mean the producers of that resource share our philosophy. Please use your intellect and your Biblical knowledge when studying all resources.
A Kinist family should be a strong Christian family. In the pursuit of that strength, we must avail ourselves of the wisdom of our elders in the art of parenting. I have found the following website to be useful.
“We believe in loyalty and strong families; honor and respect for parents and the home. Articles show the nature and prevention of rebellion. Young families will enjoy the hints from older women, and older families will gain insight into dealing with grown children. Bring stability to the family by following time-proven principles.”
Some folks take exception with Michael Pearl’s version of Bible-believing; however, his published work on child training and relationships between husband and wife are extremely useful and completely in line with the Biblical models.
More on cloth diapering. Some might say I put too much attention on a mundane subject, but if one can save substantial amounts of money by paying attention to a mundane area of life, I say “go for it!”
There are difficulties for some with the version of patriarchy that underlies the Ladies Against Feminism philosophy and that actions of some of its proponents; still, many of the articles they post are valuable.
It is another resource where we urge readers to use discretion and scripture.
Yes there is some stuff on this site, I admit I do not like. But they do post a lot of good articles and links on their blog.
Laurel Loflund - 01 March 2008 01:41 PM
There are difficulties for some with the version of patriarchy that underlies the Ladies Against Feminism philosophy and that actions of some of its proponents; still, many of the articles they post are valuable. It is another resource where we urge readers to use discretion and scripture.
“Tom Flynn, who after this issue steps down as founding co-editor of Secular Humanist Bulletin, has taken extraordinary care not to form a family. He lives in a non-familial household and is childfree by choice.”
Praise God for that last…no child should be submitted to this man’s “instruction.”
God bless us and keep us from such insanity,
Laurel
It is just hard to believe how insane these people are. And these are the people who always talk of “freedom?” Which to them means slavery to the state. That is what they call Humanism?
People think freedom means license; but when license proceeds to disorder community life, which it inevitably does, organized government feels compelled to control the out-of-control. This inevitably leads to tyranny and totalitarianism.
My husband and I are getting ready to do what many couples in these brink-of-recessionary times would consider unthinkable. No, we’re not buying a Martha’s Vineyard retreat or planning a month in St. Bart’s or eco-decorating our house.
We’re planning to have a third child.
What shocks people, when we tell them, isn’t the thought of hauling three kids onto a place for a vacation, or even the idea of coming home every night to a houseful of runny noses and homework assignments. What gets them is the sheer financial audacity. Raising kids today costs a fortune. Last month, the Department of Agriculture estimated that each American child costs an average of $204,060 to house, clothe, educate and entertain until the age of 18.
But to me, a family with just two kids seems minimalist, and even a bit sad. Back in the 1970s, when my husband and I were born, sprawling families were more common. My husband had two sisters and, following a Brady-Bunchy set of remarriages in my family, I wound up with seven brothers, real and step. I’ve always fantasized about creating a “Meet Me in St. Louis”-style household of my own, with children constantly underfoot and enough relatives around to skip to my lou en masse.
And yet nowadays, people seem aghast if a couple wants more than two children. When Elana Sigall, a 43-year-old attorney in Brooklyn, was pregnant with her third, people came up to her constantly, she said, to admonish her: “You’ve got a boy and a girl already. Why don’t you just leave it alone?”
What’s worse, the desire to have another child opens one up to charges of elitism and status consciousness. In many major U.S. cities and their suburbs—especially New York, where I live—having three or more children has now come to seem like an ostentatious display of good fortune, akin to owning a pied-Ã -terre in Paris. The family of five has become “deluxe.” Last year, novelist Molly Jong-Fast mused in the New York Observer, “Are people having four or five children just because they can? Because they feel that it shows their wealth and status? In a world where the young rich use their $13,000 Birkin bags as diaper bags, one has to wonder.”
We not only wonder, we marvel, we get jealous, we gawk. “Having three kids in the city is a way of showing off, absolutely,” says Elisabeth Egan, who, like many families she knows, moved out of New York to the suburbs of Montclair, N.J., to manage the feat. “A third child in the city is definitely a luxury good.”
It’s true that, following in the designer maternity clothes of such fecund celebrities as Posh Spice (three kids) and Angelina Jolie (speculatively six), most of the people going for a third baby are well-heeled moms and their high-salaried husbands. A February analysis of Current Population Survey data by the Council on Contemporary Families found that in the past 10 years, the top-earning 1.3 percent of the population has seen an uptick in families with three or more children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 12 percent of upper-income women had three children or more in 2002, compared with only 3 percent in 1995.
They come to the conclusion that the child is more important than the consumer goods that tempt the parents.
Of particular concern to parents are the following points:
Early experiment showed children passive when watching favorite programs
Moods are the same or worse after turning TV off
Critical brain functions shut down
TV causes ADHD symptoms in children
(I can speak for the truthfulness of this last point, having experienced a complete change in behavior for the positive in my daughter when she was 4 or so and I cut out the TV.)
I hadn’t really thought about this topic prior to reading the article, but can see the importance of raising boys to become serious young men and adults, not “class clowns” or “silly.”
Perpetually silly boys are an embarrassment to their fathers and a shame to their mothers; moreover, they are the public proof of a father’s neglect and a mother’s indulgence.
A silly boy is disgusting and repulsive, because he is the antithesis of all that is attractive in a male. There is no age at which silliness is normal. It is in all circumstances inappropriate. How many times have you heard people say it, “Don’t be silly”? All of my readers could mimic the tone at which it is always uttered—a hurried, dismissive, embarrassment, carrying a presumption that it is out of place and most unbecoming.
Almost every boy will get silly from time to time. Mine did. Thankfully, it was passing, and not characteristic of them as a whole. But there are some boys who retreat behind a clown’s mask of silliness. They adopt it as the persona of their social self. The sillier they are, the more they are rejected, and with further rejection comes more silliness, a make-believe world where all is laughter and irresponsible indulgence. Their fool’s paradise is a retreat where no demand can be placed upon them and where they can take the stage as somebody else, hoping to get a laugh or at least create one for themselves. Silliness is a wall against transparency, a rejection of responsibility, and a denial of accountability. It is a drug, a high, a continuous party mentality, a thoughtless denial of tomorrow.
Certainly worth reading the entire article. One may differ with him on a few points, but overall it is fine stuff.
