The Dark Side of Disposable Diapers

Corporate greed, endocrine disruption, and the normalization of developmental delay

Hi! It’s me, Lady Buzzkill. You might remember me as the woman who critiques beloved societal trends such as sunscreen, birth control, cannabis, and Tylenol. In case there are readers I haven’t yet alientated with my opinions, let me tell you what I think about disposable diapers.

Wrapping your child’s genitals in plastic and teaching them it is normal to poop in their pants is a bad idea.

There, I said it. But let me do the obligatory backtracking to make sure everyone knows I have compassion and am not intentionaly out to hurt your feelings. Parenting is hard work. We all feel sensitive about our parenting decisions and often we view criticism of childrearing trends as personal attacks. I would like to invite readers to remember that we live in a society where consumer choices are shaped by moneyed forces and that my criticism is aimed primarily at those forces, not at mothers just trying to get through the day.

So please view this article as an expose on Big Diaper Inc, and let’s examine how the disposable diaper industry is hurting our kids.

In 1950, most American infants were daytime potty trained by one year of age. In 1970, children reached this developmental milestone by 18 months on average. In the 1990s, when my children were babies, daycare centers expected children to be using the potty consistently by age two. In 2024, pediatric experts advise parents to start the process of potty training at two and a half. The average age of potty training in the US is now 3.5 years.

What is going on here? And why are we ok with it? If children in the US were taking their first steps two years later than they were in the 1950s, would we just accept that as the new normal? If kids were routinely not speaking until age 3, would this massive delay from the previous developmental norm trouble us enough to ask why this was happening?

Like walking and talking, potty training is a major developmental milestone. Developmental milestones are the necessary behaviors that form the foundation for all future growth and learning. As infants and toddlers, we must learn to hold our head steady before we can sit. We must learn to pull ourselves to standing before we can walk. We have to learn to babble before we say a few words. We must learn to say a few words before we can begin speaking in full sentences.

We must learn to use the toilet before we can be full members of society. Routinely soiling ourselves hampers our social mobility. No one enjoys spending time with someone who has just pooped their pants. And no child enjoys spending time in a wet or poopy diaper. Children today are spending literally years longer in dirty diapers than their peers from several decades ago.

Pediatric care providers consider delays in development major concerns for a child. Children with developmental delays are referred to specialists who design intensive therapies with the goal of getting them up to speed with their peers. We acknowledge that children who haven’t learned to walk or talk by 18 months need behavioral intervention. Why are we normalizing later and later potty training?

What if I told you there is a global cabal invested in delaying potty training as long as possible?

The great economic reset of World War II brought the concept of convenience to home economics. During the war women were required to enter the workforce while the men were off fighting. These women who had experienced higher status wage labor for the first time were not eager to return to lives of unpaid household drudgery when the war was over. To get women’s buy-in, housewifery needed a reboot. The post-war industrial economy introduced the phenomenon of nuclear (as opposed to extended) families each living in a single home full of modern conveniences to be purchased with “disposable income.”

The decades after WWII were marked by high-speed social changes that rival our own rapidly moving times. Birth left the realm of women’s culture and the home and became an industrialized process. Babies became a product delivered by hospitals and doctors. Women’s vernacular shifted from “when you were born” to “when I brought you home from the hospital” as the way to describe the beginning of mothering. By the 1950s nearly all American women birthed in hospitals.

Anesthetized and lain flat on their backs, women were no longer active participants in the birth process. Doctors routinely cut the unconscious women’s vaginal openings and pulled their babies out with forceps. Women stayed in the hospital for eight to 14 days after giving birth, and during this time they were not active participants in caring for their newborns. After birth, babies were kept in hospital nurseries and brought to their mothers for visits at the discretion of hospital staff.

Unsurprisingly, the industrialization of childbirth coincided with the mainstreaming of “formula” (sounds science-y, right? So it must be good!) and disposable diapers. Women recovering from being knocked unconscious and cut open were handed babies (not always their own) who had already been fed concoctions produced by pharmaceutical companies and wearing diapers also made by pharmaceutical companies. Johnson and Johnson created the first mass-produced infant formula in 1910 and the first mass produced disposable diapers in 1948. Free samples of these new products were given to mothers on American maternity wards.

The message from authority figures was clear: formula and disposable diapers were modern, scientific, and medically-approved. Stripped of the mammalian mothering instincts that awaken during an undisturbed birth, women did whath they were told. Breastfeeding rates plumetted. By the late 1960s fewer than 30% of American mothers breastfed their infants and disposable diapers were found in over 80% of homes with babies.

Why correlate formula feeding with disposable diapers? Well, in addition to factors already mentioned like the convenience economy and the industrialization of motherhood, it is well known that formula feeding creates stinkier and more repulsive baby poop than breast milk. The stools of breastfed babies smell milder and clean up more easily than those of babies eating factory-produced food. The introduction of formula made dealing with baby poop a yuckier endeavor. Throwing away formula-fed poopy diapers was much preferable to washing them out.

In the 1970s when mothers of young children entered the workforce en masse, Big Diaper Inc. marketed disposable diapers as a fundamental tenet of women’s liberation. Single use throwaway diapers freed women of the work of laundering cloth nappies. Leaving our infants in the care of strangers was sold as the height of female freedom, and most daycare centers required that babies be clothed in disposable diapers.

Diapers became, and remain, big business. And as we all learned from reading Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, “business is business and business must grow.” The disposable diaper industry poured millions of dollars into convincing parents that their product was superior to cloth diapers and other more traditional methods of dealing with baby waste. Mothers were sold the idea that disposable diapers were not only more convenient than previous methods of dealing with babies’ elimination needs, but also healthier and even better for the environment!

I often wonder if archeologists of the future sifting through the mess we have left behind will conclude we were a culture that worshipped baby poop. Our trash middens, which we call landfills, overflow with countless hermetically sealed offerings of baby waste.

Like the caches of honey and human organs found in the Egyptian pyramids, these biological samples are stored in ways that ensure they will never biodegrade. And every year we add tons and tons more of the sacred waste to our trash piles. In 1970, Americans threw away 350,000 tons of used disposable diapers. By 1980 this had increased to 1.9 million tons. In 2006, 3.6 million tons of used diapers reached our landfills, and by 2021 this number was 4.4 million tons.

The diaper industry and disposable diaper apologists continue to insist that single use plastic diapers may be more sustainable than cloth diapers. They argue that cloth diapers require water for washing, and this negates any environmental benefit over disposables. In reality, each disposable diaper requires at least as much water to manufacture as it takes to rinse out and wash a reusable diaper. Cloth diapered children also potty train an average of at least six months earlier than children who wear disposable diapers, which translates into far less water and energy use per child.

Diaper choice remains a major arena of the “mommy wars,” and you can find many arguments as to which diapering decision makes someone a better mother. What gets ignored in the debate is the role of industry in shaping our diapering decisions. Pampers and Huggies have paid for product placement ads in movies and television shows aimed at parents for decades. By 1980, 90% of US parents were using disposable diapers. Not content with this economic victory, the diaper industry set about ensuring that American children remain in diapers for years longer than their generational predecessors.

In the early 1990s, Pampers hired pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton to market the idea that early toilet training was harmful to children. Brazelton invented “child-led parenting” in the 1960s and had gained some fame in the world of child development. Brazelton publicly argued that instead of teaching children bowel and bladder control from early infancy (as our ancestors had always done), parents should practice child-led toilet training and wait for signs of readiness from children before introducing the potty. Brazelton insisted that most children are not ready to start toilet training before age two and a half, an age at which nearly all children of previous generations were completely out of diapers.

In 1999, Brazelton starred in television ads promoting the newly released Size 6 Pampers to be used on chidren weighing over 35 pounds. Before then, diapers of this size were a specialized medical product for children with severe developmental delays. Brazelton was paid to normalize keeping kids in diapers until age three and a half or four. In addition to the TV ad campaign, he appeared on many daytime talk shows, was featured in parenting magazines, and wrote op-eds in papers promoting waiting to start potty training until children decide for themselves they are ready.

Today, teachers are reporting a concerning trend of more and more “neurotypical” five year olds showing up to kindergarten in diapers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hollywood mothers are now publicly announcing that their five year old children still wear diapers.

Delaying the average age of potty training results in billions of extra dollars for the diaper industry. The global disposable diaper industry is valued at over $82 billion dollars and is expected to grow by over 5% a year for the foreseable future. With global birth rates declining, the industry needs children to stay in diapers for increasingly longer periods of time in order to continue growing.

In addition to literally retarding the development of our children, disposable diapers bring other problems. Containing plastic, plasticizers, absorbant gel, bleaching agents, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), adhesives and dyes, disposable diapers are toxic. There is no FDA oversight of diapers. The diaper industry is regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which does not require diaper manufacturers to disclose chemicals used in diaper production or to test diapers for safety.

A 2019 study in the journal Reproductive Toxicology tested four different brands of diapers and found xylene and toluene in all of them. Xylene and toluene are VOCs which can be absorbed through the skin. They are both known endocrine disruptors that can damage the reproductive organs of infants. The authors of the study expressed concern about “the physical location of the exposure site, the high absorption rate of the genitalia for chemicals, and the long-term exposure period.” We are endangering the fertility and reproductive health of our children by wrapping their genitals in toxic products for years on end.

The adhesives used in disposable diapers often contain VOCs called alkylphenol ethoxylates, or APEOs. APEOs prevent the glues in diapers from breaking down. These chemicals bind to estrogen receptors in the body, disrupting the endocrine systems of both baby girls and boys. APEOs have been linked to reproductive cancers.

Most disposable diapers contain pthalates, a class of chemicals used to keep plastic products pliable. Pthalates create dysfunction in the endocrine system. They have been linked to abnormal ovarian function and to lowered sperm counts. Pthalate exposure increases the lifetime risk of breast and testicular cancers.

The super absorbent gels in disposable diapers can also create health problems. Sodium polyacrylyate, the most common super absorbent polymer use in diapers, contains acrylamide and acrylic acid. Acrylamide has been linked to ovarian and endometrial cancer. Acrylic acid irritates the skin and mucous membranes. Long term exposure to acrylic acid damages the adrenal glands, kidneys and bladder.

Most disposable diapers contain bleached wood pulp, although unbleached diapers are gaining in popularity among consumers trying to avoid chemicals in their products. The industrial pulp bleaching process involves chlorine dioxide, a chemical that causes irritation to the skin, mucous membranes and lungs. Chlorine dioxide can enter the bloodstream through the skin. In the bloodstream it decreases the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen.

I’ve been seeing an increase in the use of diapers with wetness indicators, dyed strips on the front of diapers that signal when a baby has peed. This trend is concerning because wetness indicators are produced using known toxic chemicals including halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) or quaternary ammonium compounds (quats). HOCs damage the kidneys, disrupt the endocrine system, and have been linked to brain damage and developmental delay. They are also known carcinogens. Quats irritate skin and cause endocrine dysfunction.

As more parents grow concerned about chemical exposures, a market in “natural” disposable diapers is taking off. It is now possible to purchase unbleached disposable diapers made with organically grown fibers. These diapers cost significantly more than conventional diapers. They also still contain plastics that emit VOCs. While they may be less toxic to infants, diapers branded organic and natural still pose health risks to infants.

In our current world it is impossible to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals. But we can work to decrease these exposures. Cloth diapering is one way to lower the amount of endocrine disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals entering your child’s body. If practical constraints prevent you from using cloth diapers, work to get your child out of diapers as soon as possible.

Contrary to popular American beliefs, very young infants are able to signal to their caregivers when they are about to pee or poop. Mothers and infants around the world have been practicing what is now called elimination communication for the entire history of our species. While it does take some unlearning of cultural propaganda around potty training, it’s actually not hard to help infants learn to use the potty. The internet is full of sites helping parents to learn elimination communication with their infants. You can start looking here, here, and here. One of the beautiful things about elimination communication is it’s free. You don’t have to buy anything to practice it. But if you want to, you can purchase tiny potties and adorable tiny undies here.

I’m a product of our culture as much as anyone else, and I admit I was originally skeptical of infant potty training. It seemed weird and even uptight (thanks, Sigmund Freud). But years of witnessing happy children being free of diapers by twelve to eighteen months has changed my mind. I used to believe only the most Type A mothers could possibly be attentive enough to practice elimination communication. In reality, anyone in love with a baby can do it. Babies are tiny masters of non-verbal communication and they will alert you to their needs.

Parents can be reassured that elimination communication works even if you don’t practice it all day long every day. Each time you catch on to the cues your baby is giving and help your baby pee or poop outside of a diaper, your baby is learning that the diaper is not the preferred place to eliminate. As Andrea Olson, mom of six children who were all out of diapers by their first birthdays, likes to reassuringly tell parents, “Elimination communication works even if you are half-assed about it.”

Getting out of diapers frees our children to move on to the next phases of development. Despite what the diaper industry has been telling us for decades, early potty training is good for our children. It increases their confidence and sense of self-efficacy. Getting out of diapers decreases a child’s exposure to toxic chemicals and greatly improves their hygeine. In these inflationary times, the quicker we can get our kids out of diapers the less financial stress we incur. Early potty training isn’t difficult, it just requires a major mind shift.

Happy pottying!