DEAR MISS MANNERS: Most of our friends and acquaintances, married or not, have now embarked on the task of producing children. This means I am invited to multitudes of baby showers, sometimes more than one for each baby.
I disapprove of baby showers for two reasons: First, we are in a global resource crisis, and people, especially Americans, should have fewer children; and second, showers encourage wasteful consumerism, when the mother can easily obtain hand-me-downs for her rapidly growing child.
I am also alarmed at the shocking number of otherwise intelligent people who, despite this being the First World with various forms of birth control widely available, still have unplanned pregnancies and make no secret of this fact.
The majority of my friends' pregnancies have been associated with shotgun weddings, underwater home mortgages, or conception occurring immediately following the loss of the father's job.
For these reasons and others, I am generally not thrilled when my friends become pregnant. I love my friends, but once they have kids, they fall off the face of the earth. It makes me sad to lose my friends and watch them throw away their promising careers and lives to enter the black hole of babydom (which, despite common arguments to the contrary, almost all do).
Given this, it seems inappropriate for me to attend baby showers. My friends are all familiar with my views on reproduction. I am happy to help my friends in other ways -- come over and do the household chores for a day, for instance. But is there a polite way to decline to attend a good friend's shower?
GENTLE READER: Yes, certainly. It is: "Thank you so much for the invitation, but I will not be able to attend."
Miss Manners notices that being familiar with your views did not deter your friends from having children, so you needn't feel neglectful about refraining from repeating them after the fact.