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How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

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Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#51

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #11
HPsquared wrote: post #8

Babies and childcare can cost either a huge amount, or not very much at all.

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…

[deleted]

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#53

Post by showerst »

cowpig wrote: post #12

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…

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.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#54

Post by colmmacc »

joenot443 wrote: post #33

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

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.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#55

Post by allturtles »

noemit wrote: post #43
allturtles wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mom toilet trained me at 3 months. Is this a typo? I don't see how it could be physically possible for a three-month-old to be toilet trained. Among other things, they can't sit up on a toilet seat or walk to the bathroom.

She had me on a schedule and would hold me up. Yep at 3 months babies can't even sit up. She said at the start she would hold me up until I went, even if it took hours, and if I went she would reward me. She Pavlov'ed me. I think she said I would cry or babble in a certain way, or if she even suspected I needed to go she would put me on the potty and hold me up.

Fascinating. I'm not sure what would drive someone to do this, since until the child can actually go to the toilet on their own, you haven't achieved the actual point (IMO) of the training.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#56

Post by ihavekids »

joenot443 wrote: post #33

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

I’ve tried it. My youngest (21 months) can definitely inform us that she needs to go to the bathroom. But she’s not quite ready to use the toilet. She either doesn’t want to sit on it, sit long enough, or gets distracted. The kid definitely needs to be open for potty training in order to it to work.

My oldest was potty trained at exactly 2 years. We just let her run around without a diaper and there was one specific time she peed that everything clicked for her.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#57

Post by db48x »

sumeno wrote: post #44
echelon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We did okay for hundreds of thousands of years. Yeah, why don't we just go back to the "okay" times of 40%+ child mortality rates instead of the current You're a genius

I’m no expert, but I suspect that going from disposable diapers to cloth diapers would not be quite that bad.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#58

Post by nkrisc »

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.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#59

Post by noemit »

xivzgrev wrote: post #46

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!

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.

Re: How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

#60

Post by [deleted] »

noemit wrote: post #15

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 yea…

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