To diaper or not to diaper?

Diapers would seem to be an indispensable necessity for new babies, but some people argue that they're wasteful and unnecessary. In this episode, Molly and Cristen discuss baby poop, elimination communication and the pros and cons of diapers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. You know
christ So one of the I would say most popular

(00:23):
and one of my favorite podcasts we've done is, of course,
what's the scoop on Lady Poop? Yes, the poop episode,
the poop episode, and today where you're going to talk
about baby poop? Yes, well more more the collection and
disposal of baby poop, not necessarily digging into the diaper
to see what's there. Very true, very true. But I
still wanted to make a connection because today we're gonna

(00:45):
talk about all of the options that new mothers have
and Father's sorry it means to be so emails centric
and Molly geez. And so you bring home your new
bundle of joy, and pretty soon as as soon as
you bring them home, there's gonna be some choy says
to make. Yeah, the question is to diaper or not
to diaper? Because I don't know if everyone out there

(01:06):
knows it, because it seems like the natural course of
events that you would bring baby home and wrap baby
up in a diaper, and you know, three years later,
hopefully those diapers will come off and you start potty training.
But you do have an option to not diaper baby
at all, and that is through a technique called elimination communication. Right,
And you know, I think that it will sound very

(01:28):
strange to our American ears because the idea of babies
running around without diapers, it's just so contrary to what
we know. But it is a very common thing around
the world, mostly in Asia and Africa, where diapers are
unaffordable and where the children tend to be with the
mothers much more often they might be here and in
the West when the mothers are going to work. In fact,

(01:49):
about half of the world's children never wear diapers and
are fully toilet trained by the time they're a year old.
All right, So when I heard of this, it's sort
of like, you know, the kid kick can't talk. How
are we gonna communicate from child to parents that it
is time to go the bathroom. Well, first of all,
baby's kind of poop on a schedule. It seems like

(02:10):
the poop and pe at certain certain times. Um, for instance,
a lot of a lot of them will go minutes
after waking up or eating. Not surprisingly uh and some
elimination communication practitioners say that you end up developing a
feel you for when your child needs to go. You
actually become tuned into your baby's bells. Yeah, it's like

(02:33):
a second since there was one uh we were looking
at diaper free baby dot com and one uh bullet
point there was that you'll just it's like your own
lap will feel warm even though your baby is dry,
and it's like, you know, you gotta get that baby
right to go. And when you develop these verbal cues,
it's sort of like a Pavlov and his dogs that
will get the baby to sort of poop and p

(02:56):
on command around these certain times. Well, it's sort of
you know, if you recognize your baby needs to go
after learning these cues, then you're gonna say, okay, baby,
I'm gonna position you. Or the baby might not know
what a toilet is yet, so you position the baby
and then yeah, you give it the command that it
is in a safe place to go. Yeah. And a
lot of times those commands will be For instance, if
the baby needs to go number one, you would do

(03:19):
something like, I really hope that we didn't make all
of our listeners pe themselves right now, Molly, that was
my number one goal at this podcast is that if
you hold your baby up, your your baby foods practicing
elimination communication, if at that moment did it work? Yeah?
Or is are we totally throwing some schedules off? I

(03:39):
hope not um. But experts say that the best time
to start this infant potty training is before the baby
is six months old, and after that it's still possible,
but the kid will be used to wearing diapers and
it's gonna have a harder time learning new have It's
kind of like when you know you're learning a foreign language.
Experts say that it's best to start as young as possible,
when your brain is still so malleable and plastic and

(04:02):
just absorbs new information more easily. So if you had
to pick between teaching your kid of foreign language or
teaching it how to be toilet trained years I had
of schedule, which which would you pick? Kristen, I would
toilet train my child in a foreign language and knock
out two birds with one stone, very clever. I can't
can't wait till your mother now, as you may imagine.
Not everyone is on board with elimination communication. Uh. The

(04:24):
American Academy of Pediatric says that babies really can't fully
control bladder and bowel movements until they're about eighteen months old.
That's the age they say you should start toilet training,
and that anything before that is just sort of like
a bonus. It may not stick, it may you know,
just be a waste of time for the parents. However,
Elizabeth Paris, who's a spokesperson for Diaper Free Baby dot Org,

(04:46):
says that infants can initiate bowel movements on que as
young as three to four months, and this has been
the elimination communication has been a growing thing, particularly in
the United States, in large part, i'd say, due to
the environmental impact of diapers. And that's why we tile
this podcast to diaper or Not to diaper, because a

(05:06):
lot of you know, green minded parents, once they have
their child, they're wondering, you know, do I go, Do
I go with disposal diapers obviously, which you will end
up in landfills, or do I go with cloth diapers
where you know, it's kind of messy and you have
to wash them, and you know, then you have brown
stains on cloth, you all that stuff, and then you

(05:27):
can just eliminate all of it by just getting your
your child to to poop or pe on command. Now,
there was a pretty interesting article we were reading in Slate.
There was a criticism of this method because the success
of elimination communication involves basically being able to read your
baby's mind and to interpret every single signal that they

(05:47):
give out, so that that requires basically twenty four hours
a day with your baby. And uh, you know, this
article was sort of going into the fact that the
whole reason we had diapers was to give women, you know,
a chance us to work if they wanted to, to
give women some times that they didn't have to devote
their entire life the baby. And the author of that
piece was sort of arguing that this would set women

(06:09):
back in terms of the amount of parenting that they
would have to do. Now, that's just a whole other
argument on its own in terms of how much time
should you spend with a baby. But if you are
expending the time with the baby, maybe elimination communication is
something you should try. There are some daycares that won't
accept children who are practicing elimination communication with their parents.
But I think we should also point out because I'm

(06:30):
I'm sure that parents out there listening would point this
out to us if we don't. UM, there are kind
of different scales of elimination communication that parents can practice.
For instance, you can have the more full time EC
elimination communication, uh if you want to wear that's more
of what the Slate writer is talking about, kind of
the full time staying in tuned and the baby is

(06:53):
never gonna wear a diaper, and it's it's far more intensive.
Or you can do more of a part time EC
where parents will practice elimination communication to whatever extent they
feel capable to accommodate. And a lot of times these
elimination communication websites will point out that it's you know,
it's if you put a diaper on a baby. It's
not going to say if you're on a road trip

(07:15):
or you know, you're at some kind of event where
it would be really bad if uh, if the baby
you know, had to poop, there might not be a
place for it to go. UM, if you do that,
it's not going to reverse all of the EC training
the baby has has gone through. So you can do
more of a part time or you can even do
occasional ec but obviously the most effective form of it

(07:38):
will would probably be the full time. Now, it's also
worth noting that in countries where it is really popular.
The Slate piece points out that essentially, you know, there
are places in China where when the baby indicates it
has to go, you can sort of just take it
over to a bush and have the baby do it's business. Yeah,
and the babies will actually be wearing split pants, split
pants in the in the back, so that they already

(07:59):
have a little little thing. Yeah. So that's just something
to consider, is you know, if you're going to do this,
will you always be in the position to get to
a toilet, because I would say in this country where
a little a little less comfortable, which is someone running
over to a bush and doing their business right, because
it just doesn't seem sanitario, doesn't seem good for the baby.
But we really didn't run across any health advocate saying

(08:21):
that this would be inherently bad or unhealthy for a child.
It just takes a lot more work. But now, Molly,
I think that we need to go to the other
side of the argument, which is obviously diapers diapers, And
we've got a subset within this of cloth versus disposable
what you already alluded to when you find out you're
having a baby. Many writers have said this is the

(08:43):
most important environmental decision you can make because of all
the studies that have been done about disposable diapers ending
up in landfills. But you know, the jury, I would
say still kind of out. People kind of hedge their
bets over the years in terms of whether all the
energy that's expended on cloth papers all away from cotton
production to washing them, whether that can really counteract the

(09:05):
amount of energy that goes into a disposable diaper. Well,
I think that this argument really was ramped up a
couple of years ago when the New York Times reported
the diapers phil landfills at a rate of twenty two
billion a year and cost families up to three thousand
dollars per child. And that set of stats was widely

(09:25):
circulated around that time and and kind of kick started
this whole argument. And I think that we should back
up for a second and note that up until the
nineteenth century, American mothers wrapped their babies in swaddling, and
then they began putting infants in cloth diapers or pads
that gave the babies a greater range of movement and

(09:46):
ensure they didn't have to be held all the time,
because if a baby's swaddled, I mean, it's just kind
of like a little little tiny mummy. And there. And
then Pampers began marketing the first disposable diaper in nineteen
sixty one, but these were not the super duper, you know,
disposable under rus that we might see today. The early

(10:09):
versions were leaky and bulky, and we're pretty inferior to
cloth diapers. But as the technology, the diaper technology, yes
there is diaper technology, believe it or not. As a
diaper technology has improved over the years. On the flip
side of that, there have been you know, more environmental

(10:30):
questions of what's going into these diapers, where they ending
up and really, you know, should we just stick with
the you know, the tried and true cloth. Yeah, you know,
as early as nineteen seventy one, there was this highway
clean up campaign that the Pennsylvania Boy Scouts did and
they reported that diapers were the largest source of litter,
and so that was sort of the first hint back

(10:51):
in the seventies that this was not the most environmentally
friendly way to do things. They're finding feces in the
sanitary landfills, in the water sys um uh. And it's
early as nineteen seventy nine and Oregon Senator author to
build trying to ban the sale of disposables, and since
then there's sort of been this back and forth between

(11:11):
the diaper industry and environmental activists about the environmental health
of these diapers. Now, the reason why disposable diapers are
good at what they do in terms of absorbing waste
products is largely due to a superant absorbent chemical gel,
which is sodium polyac relate. Now, studies have been done

(11:33):
on this chemical and it has been linked to allergic reactions,
toxic shock syndrome, and also may have the potential to
harm your household pets if they start chewing up your
baby's diapers. So that sounds terrible, of course, But of course,
with with every study finding, there is yet another study
to counteract all that. Because large companies like Procter and

(11:55):
Gamble that are marketing all of these diapers are not
going to say, oh, yeah, they cause toxic toxic shock. No, no, no,
they they're gonna go back and they're gonna look at
it again. So there have been some conflicting findings. For instance,
Molly and I found an article in Wired that reported
on the follow up to that toxic shock allergic reaction information,

(12:22):
and an environmental scientist with Procter and Gamble later went
back and studied the sodium polyacrolyte a little closer and
and found that there was no connection between toxic shock
and outerwear for instance, like the you know, the babies
are wearing it on the outside because the same chemical
was removed from tampons in because of that link to

(12:46):
toxic shock syndrome, which is a bacteria caused illness. But
there have been no studies indicating that materials containing the
chemical that are worn on the outside of the body,
including you know, feminine napkins and all that might cause
any kind of health problem. Now here's one study that
the diaper industry has not been able to explain away yet,

(13:08):
and that is when it comes to baby boys and
diapers in this uh, there's an article in October two
thousand in the Issue of Disease in Childhood, and this
article they found that the scrotal skin temperatures of boys
were significantly higher when they wore disposable diapers than when
they wore cloth diapers, and so they were saying that
prolonged exposure of these disposable diapers as infants could at

(13:31):
some point lead to the decline of sperm production among
adult males. Procter and Gamble has done their own study
and found that there was a slight increase, but not
as much as the German researchers found. And so I
think whenever you're reading any of these studies about diapers,
you've got to look at who's putting them out. There's
one big study in when Procter and Gamble commissioned to

(13:51):
study by Arthur D. Little consulting firm about the cost
of laundering a cloth diaper over its lifetime, and they
found that it was going to take six times the
amount of water over the lifetime that it would take
to make one single use diapers. So they were able
to come out in the nineties and say, oh, no,
you know, all that washing is just as bad for
the environment. But then people criticize and say, well, you're

(14:14):
not using the latest washing machine specs, or you're not
using the correct cost of diaper, So it's it's a
lot of back and forth. Yeah, and you know, like
you pointed out, cloth diapers are not entirely off the
hook also in terms of these industrial chemicals that are
being used. For instance, in an article from how stuff
works dot com points out that with advances and cloth diapers,

(14:36):
there are still some polymer chemicals that are showing up
in the more newfangled kinds of cloth diapers, including vinyl
polyester and water repellent finishes. And in addition, if you
are laundering your cloth diapers, you might end up using
things like chlorine bleach, which could which could be irritating

(14:57):
to a baby's skin as l and you know, they're
saying that if you use a laundry service to do
that as well, you may not be able to keep
as close eye on how they're washing your diapers. Now,
let's go into some pros and cons, because there are
a few. They're saying that cloth diapers and no diapers
might prevent diaper rash better than wearing a disposable diaper. Mike.

(15:19):
They're also saying that if you have a cloth diaper
as possible that your baby will want to toilet train earlier,
because when he or she wets himself, it's they feel
the wet, whereas it's in a disposable diaper, all that's
being sucked up. They aren't as conscious of the fact
that they are urinating, and they may not go for
the toilet training idea quite as quite as easily. Yeah,

(15:39):
and I think that's Some critics also point to the
fact that companies have marketed disposable diapers that are more
like disposable underwear for toddlers, although a lot of times
that's to prevent things like bed wedding in that transitional
phase between diapering and potty training. But you know, at
the end of the day, obviously these companies, you know,
they wanna probably want to make a buck, so they

(16:00):
they keep coming out with uh with more and supposedly
better products. But we we went to the New Parents
Guide online and their consensus was that, you know, it's
really up to the parent and also up to the
baby's needs whether or not it has sensitive skin, and
talk to your doctor if you're concerned about whether or

(16:20):
not you should diaper. In terms of the environmental impact,
um we found an article from the Green Lantern column
on Slate that analyzes the environmental impact of different products,
and he was looking at the environmental impact of you know,
cloth diapers versus disposable diapers, and it's really if you
compare the washing, like you pointed out in the study earlier, Molly,

(16:44):
and then the production that goes into production in ways
that goes into the disposable diapers, and the environmental difference
is kind of negligible. It's kind of negligible. And he
kind of goes into the same issue we were talking
about earlier in terms of elimination communication that it may
just come down to time. If your time is money,
then disposables are more convenient. So no one ever wants

(17:05):
to have to make a choice of you know, convenience
in their own life. Verst is what's good for the planet.
But we all do that every day, whether we you know,
like it or not. So they're saying, you know, if
you are a new parent, it's a stressful time. Perhaps
you know, if a disposable is what will save your sanity,
that might be the way to go. But I did
like one way that he closed out this article, Kristen,
which is how you know we have this diaper debate.

(17:28):
It leads to a lot of environmental back and forth
about what's the best thing for a new parent to do.
And he said that it's curious how people feel so
guilty about using Huggies, but not about all the fossil
fuels that went into making and transporting their brand new bouncers, swings,
and diaper pails. And he pointed out, you know that
secondhand baby gifts of that sort are often frowned upon,

(17:50):
that you always want the newest and the best thing
for your baby, and that maybe if we looked at
babies a little bit more holistically in terms of the
ways they produce and use secondhand things, that may be
the disposable diaper choice wouldn't be the worst thing that
you could do, right. And I'm sure that you know
they're gonna be parents on all three sides of this
diapering and not diapering argument. And the thing is, it

(18:14):
seems like from our research, each of those different arguments
are completely fine and valid as long as you know
it takes into account the baby's needs and the parents
time and doctor recommendations and all of that kind of
like conversations that we've had about breastfeeding and other issues
that are very important that a lot of parents feel

(18:37):
very strongly about. But it does seem like another one
of those fields where it's not really a black and
white right or wrong situation. Um. But but Molly, I
think that it would be nice to maybe in this
discussion instead of just on a on a debate or
an argument, let's let's tell a little story, a little
bit of a diaper story, if you will, And can

(18:58):
we praise a female at the same time, because if
we're not doing that, I don't know if I want
to do it. Yeah. No, let's praise a female inventor. Okay,
let's talk about old Marian Donovan. Yeah, she's really the
reason why we're having this conversation to begin with, because
Marian Donovan was the inventor of disposable diapers. Yes, did
not get a lot of credit for it, but basically,

(19:19):
she spent a lot of her childhood hanging around a
manufacturing plant run by her father and uncle, and so
she learned a lot about how to uh be you know,
crafty with what she had laying around, and when she
became a mother that helped her a lot. Yeah, she
became kind of frustrated at the repetition of changing her
youngest child's dirty nappies, cloth nappies and bedsheets and clothing.

(19:44):
And Marian Donovan just got tired one day and she
said to herself, she said, Marian, you and I we
together are going to craft a disposable diaper. And she
used a shower curtain. I love this because she was
trying to think of something, you know, that would be
absorbent that you know, you wouldn't have lots of lots
of leaks, the the waste wouldn't just seep right through

(20:08):
like it would, um, like it might on cloth diapers.
Although I don't you know, it's not like their paper
towels or anything like that. I'm not trying to point
that out. Um, but yeah, she came up with this
waterproof diaper cover. Now, there were already rubber baby pants
on the market, but they caused diaper rash. They're very pinching.
And so what she does is she just perfects the

(20:30):
invention over and over again. She gets rid of the
safety pins, which can stab a baby if you're clumsy
like me, and she put the snap fasteners in place
that would soon become the sticky convenient stickers on diapers,
and she called her cover the Boater because she said,
I thought it looked like a boat. What inspiration. Um.
But the Boater was a huge success from the time

(20:52):
that it debuted at Sacks Fifth Avenue in nineteen nine.
So obviously disposable diapers really for the masses at first, um.
But then she received a pattern in nineteen fifty one
and then sold the rights to the Kiko Corporation, and
then we have snowballed into today's vast diapering products from

(21:16):
all sorts of manufacturers and companies. Yeah, she went from
just having a diaper cover to figuring out what what
she could put into that cover, what kind of paper
absorbency she could put in there to make a holy
functioning unit, the disposable diaper. She sold that to Pampers
and they were on the market in one So there's
your history lesson women's history, lesson for today. And of course,

(21:40):
as always, if you have any comments or perspectives on diapering,
Molly and I would love to hear about them, because
you know, Molly and I aren't exactly speaking from first
hand experience, although I have changed a lot of diapers
in my time. UM, So you know I'm not I'm
not completely winging it here, but we want to hear
or mean parents out there. What do you think? Do

(22:02):
you care? Is it a big deal as time important?
Any elimination communication practitioners out there, let us know your
thoughts are addressed. Is mom stuff at how stuff works
dot com? And in the meantime, Molly, won't we read
a few listener mails. Okay, I'm gonna I have two
here because they're talking about the same thing. One is
from Kim and one is from Stephen, and it's about

(22:24):
our political quotas episode. Both of these emails relate to
the situation in New Zealand, so let's start first with Kim.
She writes, our country was the first in the world
to enable women to vote, and perhaps it is this
groundbreaking achievement that has made women feel just as entitled
to positions in our governmental system as men in Helen
Clark became the first elective female Prime minister of our

(22:46):
country and only lost her position when her party lost
the two thousand and eight election. After the election, novelty
of our first female Prime Minister war off. No one
saw hers fighting for women's issues. She was simply a
brilliant leader, improving the lives of those on welfare, and
you see spending on healthcare and education. She was just
a politician. People loved or hated her or didn't care
based on her party's policies, and not because of her gender.

(23:09):
Now and then a small debate with darting the media
about why she didn't have children or about the role
of her husband, but she never seemed to let it
get to her, handling it all with poise and dignity.
She was labeled by Forbes the twentieth most powerful woman
in the world in two thousand six while still in office,
and now she is the administrator of the United Nations
Development Program, so that is a little bit about Helen

(23:29):
Clark and Stevens sort of made the same point that
New Zealand is the only country in the world in
which all the highest offices in the land had been
occupied occupied simultaneously by women. Between March thousand five and
August two thousand six, the following women held the following
positions Queen Elizabeth the Second, Governor General, Dame Celia Cartwright,
Prime Minister, Helen Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives,

(23:51):
Margaret Wilson, Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. All right, well,
I've got one here from Brenda, and this is on
our podcast about whether there's a female equivalent to the
word bachelor. She says, first, I want to say that
I'm a forty two year old single, never married, child
free woman, the great job, a comfortable lifestyle, and a

(24:12):
truckload of amazing friends. I've been in my share of
relationships and can honestly say that at this point in
my life, I'm the happiest I've ever been. Unlike most
women my age who are settled with children and a husband,
or who are single, divorced and miserable, I have managed
to buck the system and live the life I want
with no regrets. I feel fortunate to have had the
choices and the independence to design my own life, regardless

(24:32):
of the societal pressures that are out there to pair
up and settle down. Remember, you don't need anything to
be happy, but you need something to be unhappy. Wise words, Brenda. Now,
she says, my idea is for a female equivalent to
the word bachelor are indie film, which is a play
on words independent and female and or freedom. And I'm

(24:53):
not expect to share whether she would want to be
like for edom or free anyway freedom, which is a
play on the word freedom O m any with an
O M, but with the d a M at the end,
as in Madam so freedom creative choices. Brenda, thank you
keep sending those our way. UM. If you want to

(25:14):
post them on our Facebook fan page, go over there
and like us and post your thoughts on our site
over there, And you can also follow me and Molly
on Twitter. We're at mom Stuff Podcast if you want
to join us in the Twitter verse. UM. And then finally,
we have a blog which you can check out during

(25:35):
the week, and it's stuff I've Never told you and
you can find it and how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
at how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
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(25:58):
thousand twelve camera. It's Reddy, are you