Are We Too Clean?
Henry here. Steve notes on March 31 that his brother came up with an argument that confirmed that my mother’s old saying that a person had to eat a peck of dirt before they died. To me it was interesting, as I had been brought up on that saying.
Today having lunch and watching the news on TV I hear that there is a condition which has earned its name from a preoccupation for cleanliness. It was lunch time and I didn’t get the details, but it was an interesting little article. One mother let her child eat off the carpet floor of his doctor father’s waiting room. The doctor also picked her up and hugged her close when he came home in his hospital clothes.
The second mother was preoccupied with sterilizing everything. Before putting her infant in the basket at the grocery store, she disinfected it as much as possible and protected the child from touching any part of the basket by the use of a blanket.
It suggests in my mind that all this preoccupation with spotless cleanliness serves the soap companies very well. Our grandparents could not be over concerned about dirt the w ay modern parents are. They didn’t have the resources. Perhaps they knew something we have been educated not to believe.