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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

#91

Post by ritlo »

stackedinserter wrote: post #81

> 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 e…

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.

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

#92

Post by BoxFour »

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…

> Modern American middle class norms are that babies cost a fortune.

> The best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition, etc. Extreme expenses.

Daytime childcare isn’t really optional in the first few years. Our system assumes both parents will work. In many metro areas childcare alone can take close to half of a median household income, and daycares are even pretty notoriously low-margin businesses. Moving somewhere cheaper is possible, but that often means fewer job opportunities and lower earning potential.

The result is a tough set of choices for Americans looking to have children:

1) Earn well above the median so childcare costs are manageable (obviously not an option for everyone)

2) Accept a massive drop in your standard of living after having kids, possibly to the point of impoverishment

3) Decide not to have children

Maybe that’s the part of the system worth questioning first.

EDIT: And yes, I know some countries or municipalities try to address this. No, it’s not the only reason birth rates are low in America. Communal support for childcare is one, but not the only, necessary component of a growing society.

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

#93

Post by UncleMeat »

db48x wrote: post #57
sumeno wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Babies are incredibly difficult even in the best case. Sleep deprivation is intense. Breastfeeding is difficult. Adding in small additional difficulties adds up. "This is a bit more difficult" becomes a huge mess when you are on three hours of sleep and there are 10 different "this is a bit more difficult" things that people are suggesting to you.

Add this on top of any sort of complex baby (illness, allergies, colic, slow weight gain, etc) and suddenly the slightly less complex disposable diaper becomes a godsend just to save a few minutes or a bit of mental load.

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

#94

Post by kannanvijayan »

abustamam wrote: post #5

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…

We used cloth diapers for our son for about 8 months, and then it just got to be too much of a hectic nightmare washing the poop cloths between work and other issues. So we did disposables for about two years. We were having a hard time getting him trained off of the diapers, until one day we just decided to follow some advice we'd heard and took them off and let him go diaperless on the floors (thankfully wooden).. and he trained in a couple days.

Just thought I'd pass along the one training suggestion I have. Cloth or disposable.. when you're ready for them to move off it - it really helps if they're able to see and associate their bowel and bladder movements with the physical artifacts.

I suspect it helps it click faster that yes, "this is the stuff that needs to go into the potty and not pooling around my legs in a clammy cold puddle".

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

#96

Post by peacebeard »

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…

You should consider “Make better care more affordable” as an alternative to “Take worse care of your kids.”

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

#97

Post by em-bee »

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.

that's pretty much the chinese way of doing it. i don't know about the schedule or starting time though, actually i think they start almost right after birth. since traditionally the grandparents help with taking care of children they have more time to sit around with a baby in their lap.

the chinese also invented split pants that are open at the bottom making it possible to just grab a child when you see it ready to go without having to hassle with undressing. and once the children can walk they just need to squat down to go on their own. i did a quick look on wikipedia. apparently in europe it was common for young kids of both genders to wear dresses which i suppose also made that easier. (although dresses were worn much longer than necessary for toilet training, so they must have had another purpose or benefit too)

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

#99

Post by the_gastropod »

xbryanx wrote: post #90
sfpotter wrote: post #88

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.

> 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.

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.

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

#100

Post by gazook89 »

abustamam wrote: post #37
gazook89 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with two kids is that solids are easier. With good diet, the poop has a good chance of just being a “roll off” and into the toilet. Get a spray wand/ hand held bidet attachment for toilet to help rinse it off before it goes in wash.

That's good to know! Makes me feel a bit better. We do have a bidet but it's a toilet seat bidet so we may need to rethink our system.

It won’t ALWAYS be nice little rollers. And it depends on diet. Right now with 1 year old it’s a lot of smears but with a good shake they peel off and into the toilet, sometimes helped with the spray wand.

We also use a cheap synthetic fleece cloth liner, too. We just got a couple yards of it from fabric store and cut it into strips. The poop mostly hits that, and since it’s synthetic it slides off well.

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