A Lack of Public Diaper-Changing Stations Is Yet Another Way This Country De-Values Caregiving
As a mom to two kids who aren’t yet potty trained, I don’t leave my house without a hefty supply of clean clothes and diaper supplies. One of the most exhausting things about parenting in public, however, is hunting for a decent place to change those diapers when the time comes.
Within a 30-mile radius of our home, I can tell you exactly which businesses have high chairs, restroom baby seats, boosters, kid menus, and child-friendly entertainment available. I can tell you whose tables are too high and whose aisles are too narrow, whose shopping carts will fit both an infant seat and a toddler, and who has the friendliest staff.
I can also tell you all of the places we’d like to patronize more, but won’t, because they don’t present a clean and comfortable spot to change a baby. Having to strategically plan every outing around something as simple as an inevitable diaper change is yet another example of the invisible labor American society assigns to (mostly female) caregivers, and I’m over it.
In the U.S., parents can thank the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) for the bulk of their public diaper-changing options. The ADA sets the baseline standard (a.k.a. the building code) for how and where baby changing stations are installed in (mostly new or renovated) public buildings. The BABIES Act, which took effect last year, took things a step further by mandating that federal buildings provide changing stations in men’s and women's restrooms. Both laws are intended to ensure that patrons have equal access to changing facilities in government buildings, regardless of gender, and set standards for placing those resources.
States are getting in on the act, too. New Yorkers got a boon last year when state building codes were updated to require the installation of changing stations in public restrooms for new construction and future renovations of public buildings and businesses, and New York City adopted a similar rule for public restroom upgrades. Californians passed a state law requiring public buildings and a number of private businesses to offer changing stations in 2017.
But while both the BABIES Act and the New York laws were widely heralded as gender parity moves that would make parenting spaces visibly open to men, there is still no consistent requirement for accommodating caregivers of any gender at every public place of business. Despite all the hype last year, that means that most of us are still routinely stuck hunting for a place to change our children. And when public spaces fail to make room for parents, families have no choice but to improvise.
Left without better alternatives, dozens of parents have quietly confessed to me that they have also resorted to using toilet seats, sinks, counters, floors, their own laps and outerwear, waiting room chairs, their partners, lawns, and the back seats of vehicles to get the job done.
David Clover, 34, a Detroit-based writer with one child, says businesses ought to consider families’ needs more often. “A friend of mine once told me, ‘If a place doesn't have a changing table, I change my kid in the main area,’” he said. “I loved her insistence on not being embarrassed because they didn't think to accommodate families. I have tried to live by that.”
Changing children in public poses an etiquette challenge that goes back generations, as my own family was quick to attest. My mother and aunts sent me their lists of odd places my relatives and I have been changed, which included the front steps of the nation’s Capitol.
But the problem is not just confined to the States, as almost everyone I spoke to was careful to note. “My husband once changed our then-newborn’s poopfest on a back table in a pizzeria in Old Montreal after it turned out the bathroom was gross, tiny, and mostly occupied by mops,” says Katia Grubisic, 41, a writer and translator living in Montreal, Canada. “He was un-embarrassed but discreet, until our older kid chose to amble over and randomly bite her little sister’s ear really hard.” The resulting “ear-splitting screams” ended up attracting the other diners' attention.
Airplanes are a particularly common source of frustration for diaper-changing parents. Just ask Jennie, 48, a writer from Maryland with four kids: “Two words: tray table,” she says. “We've all been there. And that's why I wipe that sucker down every time I get on an airplane.” (Jennie asked to withhold her last name for obvious reasons.)
Indeed, several other parents readily admitted they’ve done the same, alternatively heading to galley floors or squeezing into flight lavatories. Trains aren’t much better. One mother said she plopped her baby in the middle of the Amtrak car floor because there was nowhere else to go.
Diaper blowouts wait for no one, not even the POTUS. Rachel Perrone, 45, of Washington, D.C., was pregnant with her second child and standing in line for the White House Easter Egg Roll, when her toddler needed an immediate change.
“We were still outside but well on our way in, when the Obamas made a visit. They shut the line down for an eternity,” she says. Unable to leave without losing her place in line, she “threw down a little blanket and did a quick change. Given the crowd and the wait, I was not alone. Folks around me didn't blink.”
In fact, any long line can turn into a diaper-changing nightmare. “We once changed my daughter in line at Disney World,” says Kimberly Rex, 37, of Staten Island, New York. “My husband held her under the arms while I changed the diaper.”
Of course, hygiene emergencies can’t be fully eliminated from public life (diaper content, as the expression goes, happens), but companies and transport services could certainly start making them a lot less common with a little thought and redesign. In the meantime, babies are here to stay. So think twice before leaving your home, parents — and maybe carry antibacterial spray.
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