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How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

• readthenotes1 8mo ago
  I wonder how much of the baby training "science" has been replicated.
• ragall 8mo ago
  Why is the US so prone to these fads ? Diapers, diets galore (all bad), the "whole language" débâcle, etc... ?
  • asacrowflies 8mo ago
    Low education populace with highly un regulated market incentives
• umang-sinha 8mo ago
  big diaper needed to be exposed
  • nephihaha 8mo ago
    And changed!
• HPsquared 8mo ago
  Babies and childcare can cost either a huge amount, or not very much at all.
  • echelon 8mo ago
    Modern American middle class norms are that babies cost a fortune. The best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition, etc. Extreme expenses. All throughout history, children have been cheap, and if you look back far enough - disposable. And even parents viewed kids as a free source of labor. Kids used to be left to roam the woods, streets, and neighborhoods. Now a lone child will get a call from CPS, fines, and jail time. The parents that favor strong government intervention and high expense parenting basically set the rules for all other parents. In developing countries, children do not cost this much. Those countries are growing and do not face generational collapse with the younger generations being too small and inadequate to pay for their elders. We did okay for hundreds of thousands of years. Did Big Advertising get the best of us and make us needlessly devote expenses and energy?
    • cowpig 8mo ago
      Yeah keep up the fight against big baby keeping our child labor rights down.
      • echelon 8mo ago
        Kids should have jobs in high school. It's a fantastic way to learn budgeting, work ethic, entrepreneurship, and gives them a drive to study harder. For kids without two stable parents, it soaks up their time and keeps them out of trouble. Since when did we start viewing this as bad? I worked at 14 doing lawn work for neighbors to save money for video games. It taught me a lot. There's nothing wrong with that.
        • cowpig 8mo ago
          Your comments are just totally out of touch with the realities of being a parent today. The average person can't afford to raise a kid because of the time demands of constant work to make rent and afford food. We're discussing an article about diapers.
          • echelon 8mo ago
            > The average person can't afford to raise a kid Yes they can, they just choose not to. I think the reason people aren't having kids is that they're on their phone all the time. I'm serious. Phone use is a dopamine sink and removes pauses throughout the day otherwise spent on relationships and thinking about the future. I'm not the only person to think this. https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/405376/pronatalism-fertility-couples-romance-alice-evans https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/405376/pronatali... Furthermore, people in past times were historically more budget-conscious and stressed than we are - yet they had lots of children. And developing nations are typically much pooerer than our lower class, yet they're also having lots of children.
            • currydove 8mo ago
              There's never just one reason, obviously. Maybe phones are a big reason we're not socializing as much and it cascades from there. But as a young parent, I'm gonna tell you flat out - the core necessities, not the best of the best, are insanely expensive today than ever before as a share of our monthly take home. I'm a huge fan of public schools, letting kids play and be out on their own till 10-11pm a night with other kids, etc, etc. But just the first 3 years until publicly funded pre-school kicks in is going to cost us over 100k. It doesn't become free after that of course, but definitely not 30k+ per annum. We'll see how quickly we can potty train, I'd like to avoid using diapers after a while, but that's not the major expense for us since we're your run of the mill dual income couple. Just standard day care is 2500 a month in Chicago. Unlike the bay or NY, there isn't a wait-list or competition to get in but it's definitely priced at the high end. We're delaying using that until both our parental leaves finish up, which not everyone gets to have in the US. We also have my parents moving close to us to help with the kiddo. Most of the things that made a village what it was without professional services (except day care which is a big one) we're gonna do, and it still is going to be stupid expensive. My parents are in shock compared to what their expectations were based on how I grew up vs today's reality.
  • cyanydeez 8mo ago
    Just like government, just let us watch! This is also the theory of so many. We can all just go live in caves guys, it'll make it.
  • tqi 8mo ago
    imo childcare is at most two of: low cost, high quality, low time commitment
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
• glimshe 8mo ago
  Now that I think about it, Big Toilet Paper is a threat to democracy by robbing billions from unsuspecting high-fiber food eaters.
  • nilirl 8mo ago
    also the nefarious population control by Big Condom
  • delecti 8mo ago
    As a high-fiber food eater, I think Big Toilet Paper actually gets less money from me than they would otherwise.
  • CoastalCoder 8mo ago
    Add-on bidets are a fabulous life hack.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• abustamam 8mo ago
  We're using cloth diapers for our daughter (6m). She's still exclusively breastfed so no solid poops but so far I estimate we've saved over $100/mo by this decision. The story may change when she starts on solids but I recommend everyone to try out cloth diapers, just make sure you have a routine and system in place to make it less overwhelming (we have two diaper pails next to the changing table, one for disposable wipes and one for the diapers, every other day we wash the diapers and liners).
  • Forgeties79 8mo ago
    Looking back my wife and I have said that we could probably have done cloth diapers during the breast-feeding phase but man… Definitely not with solid foods. I don’t know how people did it. Like yes of course if we didn’t have an option we would do it, but with disposable diapers right there… There’s no way I’m ever choosing cloth diapers and solid foods lol
    • jonhohle 8mo ago
      I never thought solid was too bad, if it was solid. We had a sprayer on the toilet and typically everything would spray right off. There are worse kid messes that I’ve had to deal with (and >10 years later, still do). At least one of my kids would get bad diaper rash, though, in cloth. We had to make sure the were constantly checked and changed even when it wasn’t obvious.
      • Forgeties79 8mo ago
        > if it was solid Big if lol but yes agreed otherwise!
    • bloomingeek 8mo ago
      Indeed, we tried it back in the early 80's. When they started on solid foods, it was simply terrible and unsanitary. With our first child we had to use a laundromat, they almost banned us. With our second, we had a own washer and we banned ourselves!
  • 8mo ago
• westurner 8mo ago
  I was designing waterproof textiles a few weeks ago and somewhat accidentally also designed a Chitosan-Alginate Fleece that could be used as fleece liner, super absorbent diapers, gauze How do the production costs for Chitosan-Alginate Fleece compare to diapers and gauze?
• Forgeties79 8mo ago
  That does strike me as pretty early but hey, I’m sure it happened and it still happens! But I do agree with the core thesis that people seem to be waiting a very long time. How long is “too long“ is hard to determine though if you ask me. Potty training is not just about when your kid is ready, it’s also about when the parents have capacity to handle it because frankly it is an incredibly intensive, involved, messy process that usually takes several days if not weeks. It also usually has setbacks and even full resets. One of my kids we started at 18 months and he almost got it but we started to see serious regression and had to pull back. We then tried again a few months later and he was good to go. I think it is very reasonable to have your kid potty trained by 2 for most people, but that is mostly based off my experience and that of my peers, not some sort of data driven observation or something. Also, and this may seem obvious to folks but it’s worth mentioning, it’s of course easier to potty train your kid the older they are. So some people know that they could do it sooner but decide that it’s worth just waiting a little longer so that the process is easier. That’s valid!
  • jwrallie 8mo ago
    I had almost the same experience, with around 18 months it felt possible but ultimately it was frustrating for everyone so we waited more, a few months later we tried again and it went smoothly. The main factor was she could understand what we were doing much better just because she understood more words. I think 2 years is a sweet spot.
    • bombcar 8mo ago
      A big part of it is modern diapers keep them so dry unless they're absolutely soaked that the feedback loop of "have to go" and "now I'm uncomfortably wet" is snapped. The difference between modern "swaddlers" and "training pants" is basically the absorbance.
• cowpig 8mo ago
  I feel like the time demands of modern life are the main culprit here. Today families mostly need two working parents, which means nobody to take care of the baby full-time. If you have someone taking care of them full-time, toilet training early is usually easy and a net time save. But if you can't ever invest that time because of the time version of the poverty trap, you are in diapers until the kids are developed enough to make the transition themselves or by seeing other examples (at daycare, etc), or are just old enough that it can be explained to them.
  • colmmacc 8mo ago
    Our two year old is potty training right now, and this was definitely a factor for us. We had to wait until it could be explained. Another factor is that diapers are now so absorbent that the kid feels no real discomfort from a pee or a poop. His main motivation is peer pressure and to be a bigger kid; concepts he's only recently caught.
    • bombcar 8mo ago
      Swim diapers are not really absorbent and can be a good "make him feel it" substitute while still containing the worst of the explosions.
  • showerst 8mo ago
    I just want to second this; a ton of parents I know had kids ready to do it earlier but waited until a major holiday/break when everyone would be home anyway to knock it out.
    • MisterMower 8mo ago
      Related, the longer you wait to do it, the faster they seem to catch on. We waited until each of our kids’ third birthday to potty train and knocked it out in a weekend, no major subsequent accidents. A lot of parents will tell you they’ve potty trained their kids and also tell you their two-year-old wets the bed evey other week.
• noemit 8mo ago
  My mom toilet trained me at 3 months. She had me on a schedule and she would hold me one toilet during the determined times and I would go. This was right after communism fell so she only had access to cloth diapers, and cleaning them was so annoying she did it as early as she could. She was shocked at how long my kids stayed in diapers. I asked her how, and well there is a slight difference between us. She had 2 years of parental leave. I had 1.5 weeks with my second. I did a board meeting from the hospital with my first. Let's just say I don't have the time to dedicate to it. It takes 2 weeks of dedicated focus, repeatedly putting them on the potty, rewarding them, and cleaning up. I know it's possible. Modern life tends to build on these conveniences and efficiencies until it's no longer possible to go back. I have tried "underwear weekends" with my 2nd so he seems what it's like to pee himself but it's just not enough. He needs 2 full weeks and I'm sure he'd get it. By the end of the weekend he's just starting to grasp it, and then on Monday I put a diaper on him again and it's more confusing than helpful.
  • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8mo ago
    > don't have the time to dedicate I hope it's worth it
    • noemit 8mo ago
      I spend a lot of time with my kids because of my work. I've worked fully remote for almost 7 years now. After my son was born I was back to work 1.5 weeks later but I got to work with him in my lap for 1.5 years (after which he started going to grandmas) He was breastfed that entire time. Taking 2 weeks to potty train is something I've deprioritized because I'd rather focus on going on vacation/recharging and the downside is minimal. There is no evidence late potty training causes any damage (except to your wallet.) You have to prioritize these things. My kids are always priority #1, but that doesn't mean I have to eliminate all other things I enjoy in life. My kids get to grow up watching me build software for millions of people, so yeah, it's worth it. I know I would be an excellent stay-at-home mom, but I'm also an excellent work-from-home mom.
      • trollbridge 8mo ago
• joenot443 8mo ago
  Have any parents tried Elimination Communication? Basically teaching your baby to inform you that they’re ready to go, and taking them to the toilet immediately. This is something my partner wants to try when we eventually have kids. Something I’d never heard of until last week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_communication
  • jbgt 8mo ago
    It works well! And it's not huge effort either. Don't overpressure your self or your kid but go ahead and follow the method it's fine. You'll be fine.
  • shrubhub 8mo ago
    it must have made a big impression on you!
    • joenot443 8mo ago
      Enough to make a comment, that’s for sure!
  • showerst 8mo ago
    A friend wanted to try this, but no daycares would do it.
    • trollbridge 8mo ago
      Nappies were an essential part of “industrialising” child care (and thus making both parents available as a labour pool outside of the home).
  • colmmacc 8mo ago
    EC only works if parents are the sole carers, and every success story I've heard had one main parent doing 90% of the care-taking. No daycare would do it, and if you can find a nanny, au-pair, grand-parent or other carer who is up for it ... small kids still just behave differently around different people. If they have a different level of comfort, anxiety, or reluctance with a person it breaks down.
• xivzgrev 8mo ago
  Parent of 2 kids. Parents receive enough judgement. Do whatever works for you! -cloth diapers? Awesome -train early? Awesome -train later? Awesome There's trade offs for each, and you are going to figure out what works best for you. If you want to train later and the diaper companies make more money, that's how a market is supposed to work. They're providing a product you value. So all good!
  • noemit 8mo ago
    If I've learned anything from parenting, its to give more grace, because you really never know someone else's situation from a short interaction or fact about their parenting.
    • mjklin 8mo ago
      “Every family has a scripture that is difficult to read” - Chinese proverb
      • anal_reactor 8mo ago
        "An SLL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made" - William Shakespeare
        • RaftPeople 8mo ago
          "Trying is the first step towards failure." - Homer S.
        • tempaccount81 8mo ago
          Why did you make a snarky reply? The post you replied to referred to a real Chinese proverb 家家有本难念的经
          • anal_reactor 8mo ago
            Haha lol I look stupid now. But it definitely would've made sense to add the Chinese version for credibility.
• Archonical 8mo ago
  With declining birth rates in the west, wouldn't it also make sense that Big Diaper is increasing prices and expanding into luxury products while unit sales go down? Expanding into products for the elderly, like incontinence, would also make sense, or perhaps expanding products into more countries (I don't know the global reach of say Pampers). I know it's not the same thing as enshitification, and I don't know if the diaper industry is even vulnerable to enshitification, but it would be such a nice play on words if the diaper industry had enshitification.
  • bombcar 8mo ago
    Big Diaper already makes product for elderly, etc (look at the brand owners, there's not very many). They're also probably developing a baby with two butts to double sales.
• matthewaveryusa 8mo ago
  All our kids were trained between 2-3 y.o, with overnight 3-4 (boys take longer (¬_¬)) honestly diapers isn't even a cost factor. When daycare is 2500-3000/month those first 3 years, diapers are picking up pennies in front of a steam roller.
  • tasuki 8mo ago
    If money is all you care about then sure.
• perks_12 8mo ago
  I know the Hustle is a Hubspot content factory, but I got to admit they've been capturing more and more of my reading and (YouTube) watch time recently. They have fascinating topics and seem to be researched very well.
• nkrisc 8mo ago
  Diapers are overall a tiny expense compared to what you’ll spend over the course of their childhood. It only lasts a few years and then you’ll never have to think about diapers again (at least until the next kid). Just do whatever is easiest and keeps you sane. There are bigger things to worry about. My oldest was trained at 3 years, and my youngest at 18 months. The oldest only trained for a week, and the youngest trained for almost year.
  • dangus 8mo ago
    It’s easy for this style of journalism to get upset about “billions” but that’s just the reality of a country with over 300 million people. If each person in this country buys a product for $10 they’ve spent $3 billion. Now it’s a scary headline about how billions in wealth has been siphoned. I for one am not going to use cloth diapers. Sorry not sorry. I don’t give a shit (pun very much intended) about the benefits: I’m not cleaning diapers out, I’m not saving soiled diapers in my diaper bag to take home when I’m out and about. It’s just not something I’m going to do when Costco will sell me over 100 disposable diapers for $20. To your point, diapers at under $100 a month is nothing compared to a single night of babysitting or a month of daycare.
    • nkrisc 8mo ago
      What we should all be upset about is the cost of childcare (and even at these crazy costs the providers themselves are barely scraping by).
• lostmsu 8mo ago
  My wife tried early teaching and cloth diapers with the first one, but with the second one we just use regular diapers. IMO early toilet training is just wishful thinking combined with confirmation bias. If you are trying it and it is going hard... just don't, you are not doing anything wrong, you've been just misled. Just wait until your child can consistently follow instructions and does so willingly for important matters. Otherwise the result is as expected.
• stackedinserter 8mo ago
  > More recent studies and surveys, tell us that the average age for starting toilet training is ~21 months. The way they raise kids in NA was one of the cultural shocks for us. 6yo kids in strollers. Parents never walk with their babies outside. Well, baby pram is not even a thing here. Diapers until age of 3 or 4. Overall hygiene/cleanness doesn't exist. It's ok to pour frootloops in a dirty tray and let the child eat it with their dirty hands. Kids' clothes are forever dirty. It's ok to send your kid to school/daycare with holes in their socks. School assembly? Let kids sit on the gym floor for an hour. Field trip - kids sit on the ground. I'm not surprised society is so mentally unwell here.
  • ritlo 8mo ago
    Agreed on the strollers. There are medical reasons sometimes or whatever I’m sure, but that doesn’t explain most of them. We pushed ours to walk outdoors as much as possible as soon as they could walk at all, otherwise you end up with the 6yo with an iPad in a stroller at the zoo, wtf. Can’t let them get used to anything you don’t want to keep doing for a looooong time. > It's ok to send your kid to school/daycare with holes in their socks. My kids wreck clothes. Others (like the people we buy them from, used) seem to fare better but each of my kids probably puts four holes in clothes per week, not even considering stains. Sure you can mend them but not when you discover the hole two minutes before you have to be out the door. > Kids' clothes are forever dirty Mine never, ever were as a kid—but I had one homemaker parent. You can do a way better job at this stuff while also feeling less-stressed and overall doing less total work under those circumstances. Between paid work and non-fun kid stuff / housekeeping my wife and I put in probably 70 hours a week, each, and don’t keep up as well as my mom did (granted, we have more kids too, but still). Coordination costs and having to chop the work into little bits between other things makes it way less efficient, and it can be hard to get to everything quickly. Things that go wrong Monday may not get addressed until the weekend, where my mom would have had it taken care of within an hour.
• sfpotter 8mo ago
  Cloth diapers are good. We used them for our last kid with a diaper service and are going to do it again washing them ourselves with our next who is due at the end of the month. Regular diapers are useful to have either way. But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment and if they're an option for you, you should consider them. Not a hard concept, not worth a big discussion.
  • xbryanx 8mo ago
    > But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment What about this is obvious? Water usage, transportation, fabrication factors, different usage patterns; seems like there are many things to tease apart here.
    • the_gastropod 8mo ago
      I think as a general rule: a reusable thing is more environmentally friendly than a single-use thing (especially when the reuse cycles are high). Yes, there are exceptions. But you’ve got the bizarre case to make here, if you want to suggest single-use diapers (that also use water, require transportation, are fabricated, packaged, etc.) are a more efficient use of resources.
      • s1artibartfast 8mo ago
        I don't think it's that crazy. It's fairly well documented that a reusable cloth shopping bag has a break even with plastic shopping bags at around a 100-200 reuses, something most people won't reach. With diapers, you have wash water, electricity, and a gas dryer in the mix. Then you have people in this thread talking about services to pickup and wash them for you. How many trips car trips is that- 2 a week?
        • the_gastropod 8mo ago
          1. Id guess an average cloth diaper gets reused more than 100x 2. Think about the mass differences you’re comparing here. A standard plastic grocery bag is about 5 grams of material. A standard cloth bag is around 250. Cloth vs disposable diapers are approximately the same amount of material. This is the “gotcha, vegan! Iceberg lettuce is less efficient on a CO2 per calorie basis than beef! Eat more steak to be greener” type of argument. 3. You’re doing the thing contrarians often do of only counting one side of the ledger, while hand waving away the other. Disposable diapers require water, tree growing, tree cutting, tree transport, tree processing, bleaching, transport, packaging, product transport, disposal transport, disposal processing, etc etc. for each time a diaper is used. Really think about the full cradle-to-grave cycle of these things. Reusables must be washed, yes. But they, importantly, don’t require any of the other steps, which is, y’know, extremely significant. It’s not even remotely plausible single-use diapers are more resourceful than cloth ones.
• jsmith99 8mo ago
  The big difference is that 'real' nappies become extremely uncomfortable when wet (child immediately cries to be changed) so toddlers get a strong incentive to stop wetting whereas with modern disposables they barely even notice when they wee.
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
• newsclues 8mo ago
  As long as people are consistent being ecologically responsible seems great. When people tell me I need to use paper straws but they can use disposable diapers, it makes the logic in my brain meltdown
• cm2012 8mo ago
  "Big diaper" has made basically every form if diaper 80% cheaper compared to 30 years ago, also.
  • bombcar 8mo ago
    They also survive much more and much longer than they used to, and even compared to cloth they can store a substantial amount of wee without having the kid soaking in wet. Of course, they have that blue line that appears at 0.01% wetness to encourage you to change it earlier, but ah well.
    • beAbU 8mo ago
      After nappy number 200, which you'll reach by the first month probably, you'll become very good at gauging nappy fullness, and the nature of the filling by touch and smell alone. At that point the blue stripe is basically meaningless. I can tell if my baby needs a change just by picking her up.
      • bombcar 8mo ago
        Yeah the only real thing the stripe does is encourage people to change early (and often). If the diaper is darn close to a lethal weapon weight, you can wait.
• karmelapple 8mo ago
  It talks about a study from 1944 in the US, specifically in Minnesota. How many of those parents were full-time stay-at-home parents, probably typically mothers, who were monitoring the child and helping with potty training? How many kids nowadays are in daycare? When there is a 3-to-1 adult-to-child ratio, doing something like this is much more challenging when there's just one adult and one infant.
  • charintstr 8mo ago
    Absolutely. 3:1 is only common ant absolute top tier daycares. More likely you’ll have 6:1 or 8:1. And even high quality daycares might not help children potty train which is absolutely essential if both parents are working but people want to potty train early. By age 3 kids are moving towards preschool and are more intelligent and have better self awareness and are more reward motivated. I think diaper conspiracy is honestly less likely here than structural advantages and modern life leading to later potty training
    • karmelapple 8mo ago
      I was only talking about infants, and I thought Massachusetts's legal requirement of 3:1 was pretty common everywhere in the US, since one adult taking care of 3 infants seems so difficult... but a quick search shows me it's not! 4:1 is pretty common as a minimum nationally, though. > And even high quality daycares might not help children potty train Definitely. I think that's pretty rare.
• konne88 8mo ago
  TLDR: 80% of kids used to be potty trained by age one. Nowadays parents train later, because diapers are so convenient that its feasible to wait until the kids are older where it's easier to train them. This provides massive revenue to diaper companies. ---- This seems roughly plausible. I have never been successful at training 1 year olds to be potty trained, because there is so much exposed poop & pie involved over such long times, that it's just way easier to push it back by a year or two when they can figure it out more or less by themselves. Maybe back then diapers were so bad, that there was always a lot of exposed poop & pie involved anyway, so potty training didn't really make your life any worse. I'd probably say those extra billion in revenue are well earned.
  • thatfrenchguy 8mo ago
    I had to go look at my Costco and Amazon orders to check because my intuition was that I spent so much more money in diapers in the first year and indeed, that was like ~75% of the cost of the first two years. Toddlers get changed so much less often than babies, and you can plan your purchases way more easily, so I’m not even sure they make that much money off those.
• basket_horse 8mo ago
  You don’t know the half of it. If you really want to know the truth investigate big formula.
• mizzao 8mo ago
  80% trained by age 1 in 1944 vs barely started by age 2 in 2026... now that seems like a regression in learning rate! Both our kids were poop-trained before pee-trained, which made cloth diapers a lot more manageable (just rinse and toss in laundry). The first one was poop-trained around 5-6 months.
• jswelker 8mo ago
  I did the math meticulously when I had my first kid years ago, comparing store brand diapers vs cloth. Once you factor in the up front cost of the cloth diapers plus the cost of water and energy and detergent running the wash, the costs are virtually identical. The math looks better for cloth if you use them for years or multiple kids, but that's not super hygienic. That's not even factoring in time and convenience. I am convinced cloth diapers are some kind of performative environmentalialsm or performative motherhood akin to the trad wife phenomenon.
  • kqr 8mo ago
    Did you calculate based on buying cloth nappies second hand and then reselling them? That was a great alternative for my family. Worked out to something like $100 in total nappy costs for one child, including the opportunity cost of tying up the capital up front. That's less than $1 per week. Make it $1.5 if we include electricity and water costs of laundry, compounded over that period. I would struggle to find single-use nappies for $1.5 per week in my area.
    • jswelker 8mo ago
      I guess if you buy them used the math changes. Second hand diapers was a line in the sand for my wife. But these people talking about diaper washing services, at that point, surely what is the point? I guess the thought of diapers in a landfill keeps some folks up at night.
      • sfpotter 8mo ago
        What do you find confusing about the idea of a diaper service? It seems too unsanitary for you? The idea that it might cost slightly more than disposable diapers is intolerable to you? Do you have any reason to believe washing diapers actually is unsanitary?
        • jswelker 8mo ago
          The price tag and environmental impact of constant diaper delivery seems off the cuff like it would negate the original benefit of cloth diapers. Admittedly I have not done math on this one.
• entwife 8mo ago
  For toddlers who are able to communicate, simply add an absorbent layer into the disposable diaper to give them sensory feedback about moisture. Gauze squares from the first aid aisle work well and are very cheap.
  • toxik 8mo ago
    Very interesting idea! I think I'll try this. Makes a lot of sense and has almost zero cost.
• kqr 8mo ago
  A lot of people in this discussion seem to compare the price of single-use nappies to that of buying new cloth nappies and then giving them to the landfill once done with one child. I can strongly recommend buying them second hand and then reselling them. They become effectively free at that point. (I get it to come out to $1.5 per week, including the iost of running laundry and the opportunity costs of tying up the capital in nappies.) I'm also happy to hear about more people doing the hybrid approach. It's not all-or-nothing. One of our children peed so much at night they had to wear disposable nappies overnight but could do with reusable during day. We also packed disposable for longer outings or trips.
  • like_any_other 8mo ago
    > and the opportunity costs of tying up the capital in nappies Respectfully - chill.
    • kqr 8mo ago
      I have an HP 12c, so doing compounding maths is about the same level of chill as not doing it.
• pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
  > In 1962, the journal Pediatrics published a Brazelton study in which he observed ~1k parents and children in the 1950s. They followed his “child-oriented” approach to toilet training, which involved starting training at about two years old. That was after the age when the vast majority of children had previously finished training but when Brazelton believed that most children would only be physically and emotionally ready to start. No offense to babies, but what does it mean to not be emotionally ready to start potty training? I’m serious. Like, do they cry a lot at the prospect of being 2 feet away from their parents? What makes us think this is emotional turmoil? The article does say > ... children following his approach were less likely to have bedwetting or constipation problems by the time they turned 5 than those who started earlier. (Subsequent studies have found similar issues in children who train too late.) But it's hard for me to see that as an emotional connection? If anything it makes me wonder about latent variables (with caveat that I have not read the study, so maybe they already looked into that)
  • thrtythreeforty 8mo ago
    You're not mentally modeling the child correctly. The child has to have several things going to successfully practice using the bathroom: 1. Seeing a problem with having a dirty diaper 2. Recognizing (at least subconsciously) that on balance, using the bathroom will be easier than waiting to have your diaper changed 3. Being willing to react positively (not obstinately) to parents' reminders to use it 4. Being able to focus enough to, say, not play in the water, and old enough to practice all the steps. And that's just to practice. Even if they're all of the above, they'll still take time. Source: watching my now-3 year old overcome each stage listed, one at a time
    • pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
      It's interesting to hear this perspective, especially helpful because you have a kid and I don't. I wonder if the child really has to recognize the problems, or just has to be conditioned that this-feeling-means-potty-time. To be fair, I don't know how that conditioning would happen without the child leading the process in some way (how would they associate bowel movements with the bathroom if not by willingly going to the bathroom?)
• eager_learner 8mo ago
  tldr: - In the 1940s, ~80% of kids were trained by their 1st birthday -By 2004, the average completion age was 37 months (over 3 years old) -That extra year of diapers = ~$3.1 billion annually for the industry -A pediatrician named Brazelton popularized "wait until they're ready" advice in the 60s — and later became a paid Pampers spokesperson, which is... a conflict of interest -Diaper companies responded by making bigger and bigger sizes (up to 65 lbs!)
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• shortercode 8mo ago
  We used reusable nappies for our daughter and introduced the potty very early. The reduction in waste is many times larger than you expect particularly with a very young child ( we started with disposable, but switched in the first few months. Here’s some notes: - Put your child on the potty during changes, and first thing in the morning. Build’s association and encourages bladder control. Do this long before trying to get them out of nappies. - Reusable wipes are also a massive win. We have face wipes and bum wipes, basically just soft cotton. Bit of water under a tap and your good. - Our biggest hurdle for moving away from nappies was nursery, as they wouldn’t consistently put a younger toddler on a potty. - Introducing a potty earlier means less poopy nappies, turns out even a toddler dislikes pooping their pants. - Expect a stupid amount of laundry, and the nappies to leak a bit ( so more laundry ). You also can’t use a drier with them as it damages the water proofing layer. - Travelling is harder… Used nappies should be cleaned within 3 days, so expect to take dirty nappies away with you for washing plus clean nappies/boosters/cloths/bags. - It’s easy to buy new/almost new/good condition second hand. Either people want to do it but don’t get on with it, or never start, or potty trained. Means a significant reduction in cost. But expect ones that have been used less to be more water proof and Velcro to work better etc. - Our daughter loved playing with the clean ones, putting them on toys, using cloths etc. Probably helps they have cool designs on the outside. I expect a disposable wouldn’t work well after it had been played with. - If you need to use disposables while you’re away etc the chemicals can cause rashes after your child has adjusted to their absence. - When they start weaning you have to “remove the solids” before washing. Yes this is unpleasant, but more often than not is just upending it over toilet. You get used to it. Same as nappy changes in general and washing nappies. - When we did swap to pants we didn’t do anything special. Just stop nappies, ensure you have a potty nearby, and deal with it for a few days. It’s uncomfortable for them and they learn fast. Expect a bit of frustration and wanting the old routine back.
• nephihaha 8mo ago
  "Big Diaper" — now there's an image. Sounds like the giant nappies astronauts wear.
• waffletower 8mo ago
  Freud had a lot to say about excrement and shame -- I think cultural fears are still very resonant here. With modern washers cloth diapers clean extremely well -- you can bury your nose into them afterwards with confidence and not notice the faintest evidence what the diaper was like prior to washing. If you feel you can't, I think that is culture speaking, not reality. You are definitely already well exposed to your family's intestinal bacteria strains so any phobia here is purely psychological. While I admit it was difficult for me to consider buying used cloth diapers, after raising two children I think I wouldn't have a problem doing it now. We found buyers for all of our children's used cloth diapers. They were in great condition. One thing to also keep in mind, typically children have difficulty with bedwetting at the late stages of diaper training, so our diapers at least, were washed dozens of times without being soiled by excrement prior to re-sale.
• triage8004 8mo ago
  Imagine the chemicals leaking out of the plastic diapers we aren't being told which is likely ruining our kids bodies.