Week 27: A mother’s dilemma: Made in China, sold by everyone

26 weeks, 5 days: Part II.

First off, let me say that I have no desire to get into the Dobbsian xenophobic gang-bang currently going on in this country. It’s ridiculous.

That said, the huge rash of Chinese-made toy recalls during the past few months is enough to make even the most level-headed cringe. And it has to be said that this isn’t something new, either – vinyl lunch boxes, clothing with painted snaps, fish, dog food, etc, all of Chinese origin, have all been recalled for contamination as well over the past couple of years, and so really, I’m not sure this is news except that the problem is so pervasive.

I guess my initial feeling was, “well, that’s awful, but there’s an easy way out of it – just don’t buy crap made in China if it’s anything that might be problematic.” I mean, folks, there is a price to be paid for all of those things you get at WalMart – the whole reason that stuff can be and is sold here so cheaply is that someone is able to get it at that price and still make a profit, and it doesn’t take an Upton Sinclair to tell you that part of that “low price” comes at the workers’ expense and the rest of it at the consumers’. Of course, that’s being a bit callous – the real problem is that most of the country can’t afford to buy anything but WalMart-esque crap (ask any grad student where he or she got his or her bookshelves – it costs more to make your own out of boards and cinder blocks than to buy some crap shelves at WalMart last I checked!), and so we buy what we can afford and hope for the best in terms of what it contains.

And clearly that hope has been misplaced, much as Big Business and the Chinese government would like you to believe otherwise. (By the way, before I sound too xenophobic, let me stress that were American corporations able to get away with such practices, I know they’d cut corners in exactly the same ways in a heartbeat, so this is not really about the Chinese per se. And if you believe otherwise, I have this two-for-one bridge-and-swampland deal for you…)

Anyhow. So we don’t shop too often at WalMart – sure, we pick up vast amounts of toilet paper and some bulk stuff from Sam’s Club, but we’re pretty careful about what we get from there, and again, it’s mostly about affordability. But if we want food, we mostly get it from Whole Foods in spite of the price. And we don’t buy a lot of “disposable” crap, so we look for higher-quality goods instead of running for the cheapy WalMart stuff. But we’re not made of money either, so this doesn’t mean we don’t have any of that crap – we just try to minimize it.

Of course, now that we’re having a baby, we want to be careful about a lot of these things. I’m careful about where my fish or chicken comes from, since the baby eats what I eat, and we’re careful about where we buy fruits and vegetables, but that’s not worrying about Chinese imports – that’s worrying about American agricultural and trade practices more than anything. And Christian and I decided we were going to try to completely avoid Chinese-made clothes when we decided to go shopping for baby clothes.

HAH. Go ahead. TRY it.

We went to some reputable, slightly upscale stores just to get some basics, and every tag that showed a country of origin (and this was most of them) said, you guessed it, Made in China. Having no choice in the matter, we decided we’d just avoid anything with painted buttons or snaps and wash things a few times before the baby wears them (which is fine, we’d have done that anyway), but we felt a little stupid.

And then, today, I was wandering around in the local snooty shopping district (which is near our house) and decided to wander into a toy store for babies. I was looking for a heavy baby doll to practice with before the baby comes (and give to the baby when he’s a little older), and was looking at various rattles and toys and such. This is one of those “educational toy” stores, so everything’s relatively expensive, and what do you know… I couldn’t find a thing meant for a baby to put in his or her mouth that wasn’t made in China. Since colored plastic Elmos and Doras were tainted with lead, there’s no reason to believe that plastic rattles and teething toys might not be. Sure, they might be safe, but who wants to risk it? (As a side note, I’m really glad my mother won’t be buying stuff for this kid, or we’d have a wonderland of crap “picked up at Walgreens” that we’d have to dispose of, but that’s another story…)

The problem is this – how much choice do we have anymore, even if we’re willing to pay for it? Even if you want to avoid Chinese-made stuff, just to protest (since this country believes the power of the pocketbook is mightier than God – and it’s ironic that the people who often believe that most strongly are the people who will use their Bibles to beat you down any other time, but anyway…), it’s actually much harder to do than you might think, particularly because there are large sectors of the marketplace where country-of-origin labelling is not mandatory.

I suppose it’s time for us to start looking for nice wooden toys made in, say, Germany… I like those toys anyway, but I’m not sure I have enough arms and legs to afford them, and I’m not giving away my firstborn