When we think about the negative heath effects of the chemicals in beauty products, we often think of their effects on women, especially those of childbearing age, and children.  However, men are at risk as well.  While men, on average, don’t use as many personal care products as women do, they are using an increasing number of them.  Especially young men.    And more and more advertising is targeting young men; giving the impression that to be attractive to women they must douse themselves in toxic chemicals (can you say Axe?).  Most men don’t give a second thought to what’s in the products they are using.  Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on a can of shaving cream or his favorite cologne?  It’s terrible!

According to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, “Mounting scientific evidence demonstrates that exposure to chemicals in every day products can reduce semen quality and lead to low sperm counts, male infertility, hormonal changes, testicular and prostate cancer, and miscarriage in your partner.”  Chemicals in products men put on their bodies can affect testicular development, sperm damage, cause obesity, cancer and other health issues.

When I called my friend Dani Abrahams, a biological chemist and detox expert with Winchester Health because I want to spend the next few months detoxing as much as I can while my husband and I talk about whether we want another baby or not, she reminded me that he should go through a detox before conceiving too, as it’s his DNA is involved as well.  If his sperm is damaged from chemical exposure, this puts our baby at risk just as much as my exposures do.  And, of course I want to protect his health so that he’s around to help raise our children.

So when you’re looking at the personal care products in your bathroom and starting to make changes, don’t forget to look at the products the men in your life are using.  You might even find, like I did, that your husband looks even better after switching to organic and all natural products.  My husband’s skin looks way better than it did when he was using conventional brands.  You can find safer alternatives to every toxic product he is using.  And if you need help finding them, ask me.  I’ll help you.

Going grocery shopping with young children can be challenging.  The constant battle as they ask for every unhealthy item they see can be exhausting.  For those of us who are avid label-readers trying to buy the most ecologically responsible, healthiest products I think it can be even harder as so many of the products in the grocery store are not options for us.  But the children don’t know that.  They see the colorful packaging, the TV characters and don’t understand why they can’t have it.  It can be difficult to teach the very young child the reasons behind the “No.” 

Here are 8 things we’ve tried to teach her so she understands our values and how we choose our food:

• Using words she understands – When my daughter was 2 we started talking about how things made her feel.  When she had a tummy ache or wasn’t feeling good we would talk about how she’s feeling “yucky.”  We talked about feeling big and strong.  When we talk about food, we try to use these concepts that she understands.  We tell her we only buy organic strawberries because the other ones have been sprayed with yucky stuff.  We talk about the importance of drinking water because it helps her body grow big and strong (also helps reinforce the message that girls can be strong).
• Teaching about Organic – When we are shopping, like all kids, my daughter asks for everything she sees.  When she asks for something that is organic, I try to say Yes whenever I can so she understands that when it’s healthy we can get it and that I’m not always going to say No to the thing she wants.  By trying to say “yes” to the organic but no to everything else she is starting to learn.  Since preschool kids are very visual we’ve also taught her what the USDA organic certification logo looks like.  Now she gets really excited as she discovers all the organic products as we walk through the store.  I love to see the expressions on people who over hear her saying “look mommy, this green circle means it’s organic.”
• Teaching moderation with sugar – Similarly with sugar we’ve tried to say yes to small portions so we can explain to her that too much sugar could make her sick.  She’s learning portion control and how food affects her body.  Also, that just because something is for sale doesn’t mean it’s good for you.  With cereal she knows she can pick any cereal that has 5g or less of sugar.  And, she is already looking for the organic logo so we haven’t even had to teach her about GMO corn & soy…yet.
• No TV character policy -  We have a policy that we don’t buy anything with a TV character on it.  We told her that companies put them on products that are really bad for you to try to get you to buy them anyway.  It doesn’t matter if it’s organic.  If it has a TV character on it, we don’t buy it.
• No HFCS – Like organic we are teaching her we don’t buy products that have high fructose corn syrup.  When she asks for something instead of immediately saying no, I pick it up and read the label.  If there’s HFCS, the answer is no.  But, because I didn’t just say “no,” I listened to her request, considered it, and read the label first she accepts the “no” a bit more easily.
• No individual serving sizes – We try hard not to buy individual serving sizes of food, such as yogurt.  Now that she has an understanding of how our actions affect the environment (see article on Earth Song video) I can explain to her that we can have the large yogurt, but we don’t want all the extra packaging that goes with individual servings.  We also try to keep reusable water bottles in the car so we aren’t tempted to buy bottled drinks when we are out.
• Modeling the behavior I want her to have – Any time she asks for something at the store even if I know I’m going to say no, I try to pick it up and read the label first.  My hope is that she will see I didn’t just say no for no reason.   As she grows older, I hope it will be natural for her to pick something up and read the label before making a purchase rather than being taken in by slick marketing campaigns and greenwashing.
• Teach body awareness – We also do a few other things that aren’t related to food, but help her understand her own body and be in touch with how it’s feeling.  We talk about how she gets cranky when she’s hungry and how she’s happy and sweet after she’s eaten.  We stretch first thing when we wake up.  We take 3 deep breathes when we are upset.  We talk about outdoor play as exercise and how it makes our body feel good.  My hope here is that she is learning the connection between the things she does and eats and how her body feels.  She’ll learn that we don’t eat food just because it tastes good, but because it nourishes our bodies and allows us to do the activities we want to do.

My daughter is 4 and absorbing everything like a sponge.  I hope that by starting early, teaching her our values in ways that are sensitive to her stage of development the lessons will stick into the years when she doesn’t want to listen to anything her mom has to say.  I guess time will tell.

I have been an avid label reader for many years.  It takes me forever to get through the grocery store because I read the label of everything I pick up, from food to personal care products.  One thing it didn’t occur to me to read the label of until last year was children’s pain relievers.  Yes, I read them for dosage and proper usage, but I never really read the list of inactive ingredients. 

But when I looked up the ingredients of Children’s Tylenol I was surprised by some of the ingredients.  Depending on which flavor you get, here are some of the ingredients that concern me:

• FD&C Red Dye #40
• Sodium Benzoate
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Propylene Glycol
• Propylparaben

I found similar ingredients in Children’s Motrin.  Now, the amounts of these ingredients your child is exposed to is small as pain relievers aren’t products used all day on an ongoing basis.  However, they are also found in many other products and I just prefer to avoid them when possible.

This is not to say I’ve never given my daughter Tylenol or Motrin.  I have and I’m sure that there will be times again in the future where I will again.  I absolutely believe there is a place for pain relievers like Tylenol and Motrin.  However, because of the other ingredients in these products I look for other alternatives first.

When my daughter was teething I would use Hylands homeopathic Teething Tablets.  They worked great most of the time.  I would save the pain reliever for when it was excessive and not being relieved by the teething tablets and she was miserable or if she was having difficulty sleeping, which again was pretty rare.  But even here, it’s important to read labels.  I had a friend whose daughter had a milk sensitivity that was triggered by the milk sugar in the teething tablets and she was able to go to a local herbalist who mixed the active ingredients contained in the pain relievers without the milk sugar.

I’ve long agreed with Dr. Greene’s advice on letting fevers run their course and do what they are supposed to do unless it is excessive or the child is having trouble sleeping.  Luckily for me, most of the time for my daughter, her fever breaks naturally when she sleeps, even if temporarily.  And I think his advice about using tart cherries or dark chocolate are intriguing, and if I may say so, the best advice ever! I mean come on, another reason to eat chocolate? How is that not good?

My hope is that as the natural products industry grows, and more and more parents become avid label reader, the makers of children’s pain relievers will find alternatives to some of the ingredients they are currently using.  Or, as in the case of artificial colors, eliminate them all together.  Because isn’t the product just as effective if it isn’t red or purple?

I will still use pain relievers when they are appropriate and when there aren’t other options.  But now I always read the labels and always choose the one with the least amount of undesirable ingredients.

I’ve been an activist my whole adult life.  I’ve advocated on issues of peace, social justice, environment, toxic chemicals and more.  When I found out I was pregnant I saw it as raising the next generation of activists.  Not only was I going to keep advocating on behalf of these issues because it’s the right thing to do, I was going to do it to teach my daughter the importance of doing so.  I was going to do it to so it would be a normal, natural part of her life that, hopefully, she’d carry on into adulthood.  And, for this reason it was important that advocacy, purchasing decisions and education be a part of her life right from the very start.  In fact, we gave her the middle name “Justice” so she would always know what values were important to us and what we hoped she would strive for.

But, how do you teach a 3yo about how your decisions affect the environment?  We would talk about why we do the things we do, like using our own shopping bags instead of the plastic ones from the store or not releasing balloons into the air.   We read lots of books on the subject.  But, for my daughter it was just a story.  It was imaginary.  She couldn’t really connect with the message.

Then one day my husband was showing her videos on You Tube.  She has a natural affinity for music.  It’s the best way to calm her down during a tantrum.  It’s the best way to get her to sleep.  It’s the best way to teach her something.  It’s also her favorite way to entertain herself.  When my husband showed her the Earth Song video by Michael Jackson, she was profoundly moved.  The first time I saw the video myself I was concerned that he was showing this to our then 3yo.  The video is a bit graphic, but not inappropriately so.  I was concerned that she was too young to see it, to understand its message and to see the pain and sadness.  But I was wrong.  This was the day my 3yo became an environmentalist.  She was so moved by the video that she kept asking me why the people were so sad, and why people hurt the animals and the earth.  It was a wonderful opportunity to talk to her about how the decisions we make affect the environment, animals, and our community.

Now when I tell her I don’t want a straw with my drink because I don’t want it to hurt an animal, she understands what I mean.  She has a compassion for the world around her I’m not sure I could have taught her in another way.  Now, she – at 4 years old – wants to be part of the solution, not the problem.  And it’s so much a part of her being now I have no concerns about the message sticking.  Every day now we build upon that message as we talk about why we can’t buy strawberries today because they don’t have organic; or why she can’t have the small juice box when we have larger containers of juice and reusable glasses at home.  It’s been an unexpected blessing.

As a mother of a little girl I want to raise my daughter to be strong, independent, confident and comfortable with herself just the way she is.  Because she is a beautiful and amazing person just the way she is.  In the modern world, part of that means teaching her that there are all kinds of women.  The labels that society places on women about how we should act, look, talk, and relate to people are not how she should decide what type of woman she wants to be.  I want her to know that if she doesn’t fit that stereotype, that’s ok. 

Before I became a mother I was very passionate about not gender stereotyping.  I was just not going to have a pink nursery and dress her every day in pink frilly dresses.  I was going to be careful not to treat her differently than I would treat a boy.

I had seen a report on TV years ago that was testing if the personality differences between boys and girls was preprogrammed or based on their environment.  In this report they put people in a room and brought them a baby dressed in pink frilly dresses.  The adults were very gentle with the girls and touched them softly, whispered to them, etc.  Then they took the baby out and brought in a baby dressed in what we traditionally think of as boy clothes.  These same adults treated the boy baby differently.  They were rougher, bounced the baby more, didn’t talk in the same soft tones, etc.  But as it turns out…it was the same baby, just dressed differently each time. After seeing this, I was absolutely convinced that I was not going to do this.  My daughter was not going to be dressed in all pink and be surrounded by princesses.

But…she had other ideas.  My daughter is now 4 ½ years old.  And she loves all things pink, sparkly, frilly and covered in princesses.  She has been telling me for more than a year that she wants a pink princess room. (Not Disney princesses…we don’t do those).  She loves to wear dresses and play with her kitchen and her babies.  I rarely wear pink, so she’s not getting this from me.  She just likes it.  And I’ve come to decide that maybe that’s ok.  Maybe part of being feminist (and raising a little feminist) is not pushing androgyny.  Maybe it’s more about choices.   It’s about giving her the choice among stereotypical girl things and boy things…or a little bit of each.  It’s also about embracing femininity and the things that make women and girls different and special rather than seeing them as weaknesses.  Maybe it’s about not assuming when we see little girls in pink frilly dresses that the parents are limiting her choices and definitions of womanhood, but recognizing that girls who are feminine, love pink and all things girly are just as strong, intelligent and valuable as the women who don’t.

I will still introduce her to traditionally “boy” things, like football, cars, power tools, etc.  I will do so to widen her choices and experiences, and to teach her she can do anything a boy can do.  But I will not do it to deny all things feminine.  I often think of a story my friend told me.  Her 7yo daughter plays on co-ed football team in the summer and is their top scorer.  One day after her game they came home, and she asked her mother to paint her fingernails pink.  To me that’s what real equality is.  Giving the same value to “boy” things and “girl” things and not limiting any activity, color, job, method of dress, or personality trait to only one gender.

As a parent you expect that you’ll learn a lot along the way, but what it means to be a woman…I thought that’s a lesson I’d be teaching my daughter, not learning from her.

I often think about what Dr. Greene says in his White Out campaign.  Educating and/or learning about toxic chemicals (or unhealthy food)  is not about placing guilt on parents, or on myself for the choices made.  It’s not about perfection or some litmus test for being a good parent or a green parent or anything like that.  It’s about knowing better so you can do better.

This point was driven home last year when one of my best friends had a baby.  This baby was her 3rd child.  When she went into labor her 2 older boys came to my house to stay with me.  Her husband and I were on the phone frequently as we coordinated school drop-offs.  The morning after the baby was born my friend’s husband called me in a panic.  He was freaking out because he had realized right as the nurse was about to wash his new son’s head for the first time that the product they were using probably contained Sodium Laurel Sulfate, which can damage developing eyes, and other chemicals he didn’t want to expose this brand new life to.  They had just replaced all of their personal care products with organic ones but hadn’t thought about packing anything in the hospital bag.  He was feeling a mixture of emotions, from anger to guilt.  I was too.  I felt guilty for it not occurring to me to remind my friend to bring their own baby products.  I felt like I should have known better.  This is my job, my business.

While talking to my friend I really had to put it into perspective – for both of us.  I needed to calm him down and reassure him that he/the hospital had not just forever damaged their son.  Yes, I was horrified at the thought of a brand new baby being exposed to the nasty chemicals that, unfortunately, are in the products that so many hospitals use.  But, I reassured him that his son would be fine.  This was just 1 bath.  He probably wouldn’t get another bath at the hospital and at home they were already well-stocked with safer products.  “He will be fine,” I assured him, while secretly wondering.  I reminded him he’s a great Dad, and it’s ok.

We all make the best decisions we can at the moment.  As parents, we spend way too much time beating ourselves up for not making the “right” decision.  We don’t give ourselves enough credit for making the best decision we could at the moment.  We aren’t forgiving enough or gentle enough with ourselves.  It’s much more productive to focus on the future, and think about doing better from this day forward.  We can’t change the past.  But we can change the decisions we make in the future.

For me, that means getting involved in my local Birth Network so I can talk with natural birth professionals to educate them so they, in turn, can educate their clients.  To remind them that when they are giving their clients lists of things to take to the hospital, be sure to tell them pack baby products with ingredients they are comfortable with, and to write in their birth plans that these are the only products to be used on their baby.

If the new parents are not buying products that are 3rd-party certified, like certified organic, it’s about reminding them to make the decision about what product to use early enough in their pregnancy to give them time to research ingredients and make sure they are comfortable with what’s in the one they’ve chosen.  And, it’s not about telling them to use the product I would use.  It’s about helping them understand the risks and benefits of different ingredients and helping them make the best decision for their family.

So, repeat after me….”I am a great parent, I will stop beating myself up and when I know better, I do better.”  Good.  That’s all you can ask of yourself.