A dearth of entries

I began this blog with zeal—mostly because I was adjusting to a quarter with a substantially lower workload than I am accustomed. By the end of week three, I’ve gotten used to all the down time and have found ways to fill my afternoons—ways that, unfortunately, do not include blogging. Instead, they usually involve TV.

So anyways, I’m back. Today’s entry? Disposable diapers. Last night at a family get-together, somehow I wound up as part of a discussion of cloth and disposable diapers.

No one in my family is planning on having a kid anytime soon, but my grandma (out of nowhere) made a comment about cloth diapers costing about half as much as disposable diapers. This set my mom and my aunt to reminiscing about the “good old days” when they had babies in cloth diapers—and provided an overview of the issue for my recently-married cousin and me.

That brings us to this entry: the history of disposable diapers. Actually, this site kind of does my work for me. I recommend giving it a read. It’s pretty interesting.

Also according to the original article, diapers weren’t such a huge deal until the Industrial Revolution—until then, parents just kind of did whatever. But once they had enough money to buy furniture worth protecting, keeping your baby (and home) clean moved up on the priority list. Who would have guessed that sofas, rugs, and easy chairs were the real reason people became sanitary in the 19th century?

Diapers were named after the fabric out of which they were made. According to this Wikipedia article, “diaper was the term for a pattern of small repeated geometric shapes, and later came to describe a white cotton or linen fabric with this pattern.” This is an example of this kind of fabric, today called bird’s-eye linen. Traditionally, “diaper” refers to a diamond-patterned weave like this:

In the 1940s, diapers were rectangular pieces of cloth, and it took some special folding to diaper your kid—probably like this:

(Here are some more folding techniques… in case you’re interested.)

Today, disposable diapers are essentially the norm. And after listening to my mom and my aunt complain—cloth diapers leak, they smell, you have to rinse them and wring them out and put them in the wash and dry them… well, it’s no wonder. However, there are still plenty of people who are determined to diaper their children with cloth, and plenty of Internet resources to help. Want to make your own cloth diapers? Here’s a video . Want to buy fabric for cloth diapers? Check out this site . Want to read a discussion of cloth diapers? Here are the Google results for pros and cons of diapering.

Interesting side note before closing: In the course of the family diaper discussion, my mom commented on how uncomfortable cloth diapers were for babies. My mom and aunt hypothesize that the reason kids potty train later now than they did twenty years ago is because disposable diapers are so comfortable—toddlers have no real incentive to start using the grown-up bathroom. It bears considering.