Interesting Facebook Feed

[Wetpants]

This popped up on my Facebook feed a day or two ago as a link from a friend...someone I'm sure is not into our scene.

Since I was raised on diapers and real rubber pants...it resonated with me. 

I also found many of the comments very interesting....

 

[Little Lindsey]

Someone I know shared that as well. Old enough that they might possibly have worn cloth as a baby, but I know they didn't cloth diapers their own kids.

[Little Sherri]

I grew up when disposables had taken over, but cloth diapers were still in fairly common use (the early to mid 1980's); I mostly wore Pampers but my mom had a few cloth diapers around, and I recall wearing them almost more than I recall the disposables, probably because wearing a cloth diaper or having one put on makes a bigger impression than a disposable. I asked my mom a couple of years ago if I wore cloth diapers as often as disposable, and she said basically "Hell, no." She said she hated cloth diapers and only used them as backup. Memory is a strange thing - I had the impression that I wore them fairly often. I love the feel of a cloth diaper, and they're great for leak protection, but I have to say that now, I'm 98% in disposables, because cloth are a lot of work, and too bulky, at least on my frame, to wear anywhere but around the house. 

[Wetpants]

My wife is very pro-green, pro environment...  when we had our first kid she vowed to use cloth diapers and plastic pants.

We got the diapers....pre-treated them like you're supposed to so as to ensure maximum absorbancy.... and went to a

great deal of trouble to find plastic pants.  Got the diaper pails, learned the procedures...she "schooled me" in the process

That all lasted about 5 weeks....which included a visit to her parents.....before, .........."That's enough...we are going to disposables!!!"

Her mother gave her heck...but didn't matter.

So I ended up with about 3 dozen car, workshop, painting rags.  Hated to see the plastic pants go.....

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

When I was on facebook, I was friends with Bristol Stompin' Bonnie. Her page, while 80% musicfromthe 50's and 60's did covedr some other tidbits of the life and times. Well, one of her pages showed a waist and upper thigh with a pinned-diaper which looked adult. I did not say anything. Then I noticed that she repeated some of her posts. a few months later she posted a pic of an advert for Empire baby panties which looked to be from the '60's by the price shown. I got an idea so I grabed the address of the post. Sure enough: a month or so, she repeated the diaper post. I then commented with the address of the Empire post and said 'the [diaper] pic looks like an adult. Are you trying to TELL us something?". It got a like from her

[rusty pins]

1 hour ago, Wetpants said:

My wife is very pro-green, pro environment...  when we had our first kid she vowed to use cloth diapers and plastic pants.

We got the diapers....pre-treated them like you're supposed to so as to ensure maximum absorbancy.... and went to a

great deal of trouble to find plastic pants.  Got the diaper pails, learned the procedures...she "schooled me" in the process

That all lasted about 5 weeks....which included a visit to her parents.....before, .........."That's enough...we are going to disposables!!!"

Her mother gave her heck...but didn't matter.

So I ended up with about 3 dozen car, workshop, painting rags.  Hated to see the plastic pants go.....

Interesting!  I have a friend who's wife happens to be a medical doctor.  They felt the same way with their first kid.  "My kid will never wear anything but cloth diapers!  They won't know what a television set is!  Blah Blah Blah Yabber Yabber Yabber.  That lasted such a short while!  Later it was, "Let me put on a video for the kids so they won't be bothering us!"  The best laid plans will evaporate just as soon as the parents see what is actually involved with 24/7 parenting!

[AwakenEvil]

My wifes best friend uses cloth diapers for their first born but she said after the other 2 it was just easier to you disposable

[nappylover78]

"Young moms today will never know the struggles of cloth diapers, safety pins and rubber pants..."

No, they can wear high quality adult disposables to deal with their loss of bladder control

 

[ValentinesStuff]

Yes, I wore them not to long ago. (I wore them as a baby too.)

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Even if yo are not a "tree hugger", the sher practicality of cloth is appanrent. There is the economics, which causes much of the conversion from pampers to cloth when they do the calculation. This I learend whena friend's wife quit work to be a stay-home mom. She said that her salary was going into the baby, daycare and all the disposable stuff. I was told by a home ec social worker that low-income persons should not use throw-aways due to the expense in '88.Then there is the enormous waste. Add that to the growing scarcity of landfill space and the fact that, once you do the first prep wash of cloth diapers and rubber panties, you "lnow wheree they'vebeen". If a bio-terrorost wanted to wreak havoc, all the agents would need to do is infiltrate the diaper manufacutring and distribution system. Remember melanine in the pet food fiasco? And with throw-aways being primarily a third world product, that is no problem. In fact, dependence on foreign sources  for staple products is a vulnerability that is probably more exploitable than cyber weakness. Who remembers the Toshiba case where they sold the US stealth underwater technology then sold the Soviets the coutermeasures back in about 1989?

[Little Lindsey]

I suppose it must be easy to say what kind of diaper a mother should use when one isn't a mother in the 21st century...and even easier when you're so hung up on one particular type of diaper that you can't possibly imagine why someone might choose something else. 

Sure, cloth may be the cheaper option in the long run, but requires a significant investment up front. Consider a family - or single mother - living paycheck to paycheck, particularly in the western world where "all lives matter" until those lives are poor. Now consider this. It might be more cost-effective long-term to spend $100 on a pair of Nike's that will last a year or more, but if you've worn out your last pair of sneakers and your budget allows $20 to replace them, you buy the $20 Wal-Mart sneakers that might last two months. At that rate, in a year's time you'll spend $120 on six pairs when you could have spent $100 if you'd had the money to begin with. Similarly, it's cheaper to pay for diapers a package at a time than to shell out for several day's worth of cloth diapering supplies.

Then, of course, you have working mothers. It's no secret that it's getting harder for families to live on one income. Additionally, women are often punished in the workplace for taking time off to raise children, so they return to work as soon as possible. Of course a working mom, in most cases, still has to deal with more than her fair share of cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and assorted child-rearing tasks. Maybe you feel entitled to judge, but I certainly can't blame a mother in this position for choosing the diaper option that doesn't create additional laundry.

Additionally, let's not forget mothers with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or post-partum depression. Maybe a disposable diaper is easier for those mothers to put on. Maybe they don't have the energy to deal with the extra laundry. Should we shame them because their best doesn't quite reach your standards? 

Now let's think about diapers in general. You think the cloth diapers and rubber or plastic pants of your childhood are the best option? What happens to those pants when they're no longer in usable condition? Do they magically disappear, or end up in a landfill with the disposables? The landfill? Okay, well that's no good. Let's go back to the 1800s when babies often wore the same cloth diaper, sans cover, for several days before it was removed and simply hung to dry without washing. No water wasted or harmful cleaning chemicals used! Winning! Or we could go back even further and use animal skins packed with grass, leaves, or moss. All natural! Not even any pollution caused by the production! I

Another point I'd like to make us that while cloth diapers advocates like to point out the waste going to landfills with disposables, the bulk of the pollution, be it if the land, air, or water, is created by large corporations. Just like we're told to ditch plastic straws and buy reusable water bottles when in reality plastic waste from the fishing industry contributes the vast majority of the pollution in the oceans, everyone switching to cloth won't do a damn thing if big businesses don't change their practices. Pointing fingers at average people just trying to get by only serves to distract us from the real issues at hand. Furthermore, it would probably be more effective to urge diaper manufacturers to come up with more eco-friendly options. There are already biodegradable diapers - they take 50 years to break down, but that's a lot better than the 500 years conventional diapers take. There are already plant-based disposables, made from sustainable materials, without chlorine, fragrances, and other harmful chemicals - pressure more diaper brands to adopt that. 

All that to say - nothing is as simp!e as it may appear. Don't judge others for making choices you wouldn't, because you likely have no clue what they're going through.