This e-mail came yesterday from a perturbed reader:

I recently read with amusement and consternation your journal entry “The Baby Lobby: The Next Militant Constituency“.

To be blunt, you come across as a selfish ignoramus.

A mother’s first priority must be her child’s well-being, this includes promptly changing them out of a soiled diaper. Any society that tries to discourage such a natural preeminence of affection for a mother towards her child is inevitably leading itself to its own extinction.

I must assume you are not a parent yourself, Mr. Maloney. Perhaps you will never be one and will have no descendants to notice your own personal extinction. But I ask you to consider the burdens of those of us who have taken a personal stake in the continued existence of the human race beyond our lifetimes. Raising children is an expensive, time-consuming, often difficult affair. It is a commitment of decades and requires, especially in the first few years of life, a constant attentiveness. I do not exagerate in describing the attention required as constant. An parent must be prepared to care for their infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So perhaps you might understand that with such a truly awesome and difficult task that a parent will take small consideration at your mild inconvenience at a public cafe.

There is no greater nor a more important task for a society than the raising of its children. The legacy of children even trumps in importance your being free of momentary distractions at a Starbucks.

Excelsior,

Michel Evanchik

Thanks for the friendly e-mail, Michel.

I think you’re missing the point, though: if seeing and smelling the contents of a soiled diaper is merely a “mild inconvenience” that I have no right to complain about, then why did the mothers feel it necessary to get up from their group, move halfway across the store and sit down next to me in order to change their babies? Why couldn’t they change the babies at their table?

I find it interesting that these mothers were unwilling to subject their own friends to the nasal assault, but were more than happy to expose strangers to the products of their babies’ digestive tracts.

I doubt the future of the human race rests, as you imply, on mothers having the right to change babies next to people who are eating in cafes. Then again, we ignoramuses are often wrong...

Take care,

Evan