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Diaper History 101
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Diaper History 101
  One of the most stunning aspects of grandchildren is their diapers. I know you’re waiting for me to try and convince you that that’s a rational statement, so here I go: Tracking the progress of civilization through its diapers. I’m just going to gloss over the early centuries: People used whatever they had at hand. Strips of linen, wool, large leaves, animal skins, seaweed. In warmer climes, the children simply went naked, and mothers tried to guess when the baby was about to make a mess, and remove it from the home until the mess was accomplished and cleaned up.  Sewn cloth diapers came about in the 1800s, but were only changed every two or three days until people learned about bacteria and rashes and things like that, and mothers started changing diapers more frequently, and boiling them between uses. Disposable diapers were introduced in the U.S. in 1948, but were luxury items few could afford until the 1960s, when they became more affordable. In 1971, Pampers® introduced tape closures for disposable diapers and by the time I had my first child, in 1982, disposable diapers were the norm. But I wanted everything to be natural, organic, pure, and I bought a dozen cloth diapers. I quickly discovered you need at least six dozen to start out, and can’t spend much time with your baby because you have to be soaking, washing or drying diapers all the time.  It was the year Huggies® came out with the “convenience pack daytime 48s,” and I bought those. They made life easier, but they were expensive, and they had some problems. The tapes used to hold the diaper closed were one-time things. Trying to pull them loose would tear a huge hole in the front of the diaper, through which the darling baby could pull all the fluffy stuffing that was supposed to be keeping him dry (later he would learn how to poke his own hole through the front of his diaper and gut the thing, until he was toddling around in nothing but a patterned sheet of Saran Wrap).  Since the diapers were expensive and could not be re-fastened, if you got one on crooked because your child was pretending to be a boated shark while you diapered him, the poor little thing just had to walk sideways until it was time for the next diaper. The second problem was the bulk of the disposable diapers. I’m not sure how many children have been rendered bowlegged by disposable diapers that looked like hovercraft, but I’ll bet some were.  By the time I had my second child in 1986, I hadn’t had to face the diaper problem for two blissful years. In that time, I discovered disposables had made giant strides – they now had an hourglass shape that didn’t cause your toddler to walk like a Sumo wrestler, and that very year, began to sport tape that could be repositioned. Another thing that was introduced that year was the advent of “super absorbent polymer” in the core of disposable diapers. While enjoying the convenience of diapers from which very little could escape, I began to worry – about landfills where all this SAP was ending up (this point is still being debated today), but mostly about babies trapped in little plastic prisons with their own waste.  By the time I had my first grandchild, a couple of decades had passed, and what I discovered when I returned to the subject of diapers alarmed me. Diapers were lighter, thinner, easier to put on and close and readjust and dispose of – but it took an advanced degree to buy them: I stood bewildered before a great wall of diapers at the store.  Different brands, sizes, shapes, types, colors, each sporting some feature that makes this diaper the One You Need. Some brands had different kinds of diapers for boys and for girls (I’m not absolutely sure this is necessary, but you can’t very well have your grandson wearing pink-ribboned kittens on his butt, instead of manly blue rocketships). Disposable diapers now had elasticized waists and legs to make absolutely sure nothing the baby does can escape. The first time I was left alone with a baby in an impenetrable diaper, I began to question the wisdom of this: The elasticized waist made it difficult to slip your finger into the front of the diaper to see if it was wet, and difficult to peer into the back of the diaper to see if it was dirty.  Turns out, the diaper company had foreseen this worry, and addressed it with “color-changing technology” that caused the rocketships to change colors when the inside of the diaper got wet. My grandson’s pants had an alarm system. I began envisioning the diapers of the next decade, that will set off Klaxon horns when they’re soiled, or come implanted with remote-controlled devices prompted by moisture to deliver a small electrical shock to a button-like device the mother wears behind her ear. Turns out, the diaper alarms aren’t necessary. I knew the grandboys’ diapers were wet or soiled the same way I knew my sons’ diapers were wet or soiled – they yelled at me. And, they can still poke holes in the things and pull all the super absorbent polymer stuffing right out.  |
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