I recently participated as a cloth diaper advocate at our local Earth Day Festival. We set up shop with an array of cloth diapers. We had the workhorse prefolds, printed fitteds, easy pockets, and amazing AIOs—along side a variety of covers and cloth wipes. Our goal was to demonstrate the ease of cloth diapering while highlighting the tremendous range of cloth diapering solutions available to today’s families.
We expected and received all sorts of comments—supportive, shocked, comical, and intrigued. What I wasn’t expecting was the number of grandmothers who approached us to simply share their cloth diapering stories. They told us of the pins, the rubber pants, the wet pails. Surprisingly, many Nanas and Grandmas were quite reminiscent and recounted the “old fashioned” method with heartfelt fondness.
Why then, if they have such positive memories of cloth diapers, do their daughters and sons rely so heavily on disposable diapers? What happened along the way? Think of the family knowledge that is being lost, and not just about cloth diapering!
Here’s an idea. When you talk to your mom this mother’s day ask her about her diapering memories and experiences. She most likely used cloth. Be sure to thank her for all her loving kindness as she cared for your tush! And give yourselves a big hug too for the all the love you show your babies in your decision to use cloth diapers! Please come back to share your mothers’ stories!
Wendy Hathaway became a new mom in July 2007 and is passionate about cloth diapers. She aspires to start a cloth diaper revolution in the Tampa Bay region and is currently working on starting green with baby, a cloth diaper retail and laundering service. She can be reached at greenwithbaby@gmail.com
2 responses so far ↓
1 The Poop Scoop? « green with baby // May 12, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[...] just joined as a contributing writer and just posted my first article–The Cloth Diaper Generation Gap. I’ve been enjoying reading previous posts as well as readers’ comments. Take a [...]
2 Kitty // Jul 11, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I love cloth diapers and never thought about using anything else with my daughter. Part of my decision came from my own upbring as well as my experience of taking care of my elderly mother the last 2 1/2 years of her life which was prior to me having my own children. I wish I could have used cloth diapers for her as it would not have contributed to skin breakdown like the disposables do.
I was born in 1969. My mom used Bird’s eye cloth diapers with diaper pins (which she was careful to not stick us with, but was stuck may times herself) and the vinyl pants for my brother and me. We lived in WV on a farm. My mom used the old wringer washer to wash them and then put them out on the line to dry. In the winter they were put on the line to dry behind either the old Home Comfort wood/coal cook stove in the kitchen or the Warm Morning wood/coal stove in the dining room to dry. She used the wet pail method and dunked them in the toilet.
I would love to know what she would have to say about the dry pail method and the choice of cloth diapers we have today. She passed away 6 1/2 years ago at the age of 77.
She also co-slept with me – having been born in 1925 it was “normal” for babies and small children to sleep with the parents and for older siblings to sleep in the same bed. There was not a separate bed and a separate room for each child.
The reasons that Attachment parenting comes so naturally to me is the way I was raised – in a fairly natural environment on the farm with a loving Mom and Dad.
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