Why I shouldn't read the Courier Mail

I know I shouldn’t read the Courier Mail. It masquerades a newspaper but generally delivers content along the lines of New Weekly. Occasionally though I get suckered in, and then I get cranky.

My biggest rants apply to the so-called ‘Perspectives’ or blogs that the news.com.au monster has created. Today I accidentally read http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/parenting/index.php (the Parenting Blog). It’s people like this that annoy me.

The article was on fluoridation, the ‘topic addressed being, I’ve been anguishing over which makes me the better parent – fluoride or no fluoride. Um, surely neither?? Surely it’s all the other things you have full control over, like your kids behaviour, their expectations from life, their coping skills, how they treat other people …

I suspect what the real question motivating these concerns is how do I know that fluoridation is safe, and can I trust the ppl that say it is? Complex to articulate and harder to answer. Are the Dental Associations biased? Yes – much in the same way that parents are biased towards the joy of having children. Can non-dental professionals navigate the fluoridation research and understand the wide ranging implications? Probably, but it will take time and lots of sifting to undo the emotive language surrounding the against case. Has anyone done any of this? Who knows? How could we tell they weren’t biased?

If people are really bothered, why not just buy a purifier? From the government’s perspective, it’s cheaper to mass fluoridate water than distribute tablets. And if it’s really about the children, surely the $200 or so for a filter is a small price to pay?

Personally, I don’t think that the risks outweigh the benefits. If some of the more alarmist claims were true, I think we would see more of the impacts. I especially dislike the claims around IQ – since IQ has been shown to be a poor predictor of anything except drunken bragging. And after all, for hundreds of years humans drank more wine than water, so the rate of foetal alcohol syndrome must have been high, and we still have managed to achieve our current standard of living. Overall, it’s the stuff that comes from left field that has huge impacts, not the stuff like fluoride, surely?

I then made the mistake of reading another of the blog entries – all about the hindsight that she should have had her kids in her 20s, not her thirties. This sort of argument makes me frustrated. Your experiences make you the person that your children know as their parent. As one comment pointed out, if you have kids young there’s always going to be regret that you didn’t do some things like travel before hand. And who’s to say that three kids in your 20s isn’t as exhausting as in your 30s? Surely the myriad of other factors (health, the personalities of the kids themselves, the relationship of the parents and so on …) will outweigh the pure age factor? And the unknown is always attractive (the grass is always greener …) – maybe another kid wouldn’t or wouldn’t be as exhausting physically, but what of the emotional and monetary price? The price on the three children the author already has? On her family, her partner, the relationship with either?

Grr. You can’t have it all, no matter what you choose. Compromise and work out the minimum that makes you happy. Then get on with it.

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