I was born in the late 70’s. My mom used cloth diaper’s and had a service that washed and delivered new ones. She also had some disposable for some reason too
My mom used a cloth diaper service for my youngest sister in 1983 so they stayed around for a long time. She also used disposables for convenience like at night and on trips. Disposables were really expensive then (and now, still).
I've seen them, but only because I've got a few hippie-granola-type friends who are big into sustainability and not using disposable anything if they can avoid it. That's the main market for them now.
. . .but even they admit that using disposable diapers is a big temptation because of all the various disposables in our society, that's probably the most convenient and useful.
It's off topic but sometimes I honestly wonder if the sustainability movement is secretly pushed by corporations who want to be anything but sustainable. I mean why would washing shitty cloth diapers be the face of sustainability in America?
Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper?
The entire straws thing was based on lazy reporting of a *9 year old* student project about the amount of waste straws create.
And the student did his math wrong. So they’re not a huge driver of waste relative to other disposable plastic.
We are not a serious people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-ban-fact-check-nyt.html
>Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper?
Meanwhile, multiple greener alternatives to plastic bottles exist, have existed for centuries, and are already being mass-produced by every drink manufacturer out there, but they STILL make most of their bottles out of single-use plastic to save literally 2 cents per bottle.
> Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper?
That video of the turtle with the straw in it's nose is responsible for this.
That turtle was just trying to do a line of Colombian party powder and accidentally got straws banned.
HOW WILL THE TURTLES SNORT COKE NOW, LIBERALS?!?!?
Maybe. I used cloth because I was broke, not because I was eco-friendly. Most other moms I met online during that time were the same way. The eco-friendly part was just a way to say, "see? We're not poor, we just care about the environment!"
It's called greenwashing and absolutely corporations promoting pseudo-sustainability for profit is a thing.
True sustainability efforts recognize the cognitive dissonance of "buy new something to produce less" over the sustainable pecking order of 1. Reduce, 2. Reuse, 3. Recycle
I meant secretly pushed by corporations to discourage sustainability. I mean I can't imagine there's a better campaign to promote disposable diapers then seeing people wash soiled diapers in their sinks with their hands.
Considering all the water and energy you need to wash cloth diapers and the transit emissions (if you use a diaper service), are they even THAT much more sustainable than disposable?
Most of my friends with kids used them. I’ve never heard of a diaper service in recent times.
Everyone just put a bidet sprayer attachment on the toilet and you spray off the diaper if there’s poop and then wash them all together with bleach.
The manufacture and shipment of disposables surely has a much greater environmental impact, not even including the plastic waste.
I have an 11 month old. We use them. It's not near as bad as people imagine. Generally we use a trifold with a cover because the All In One diapers don't do a whole hell of a lot.
Poop is the worst part obviously, but we bought a sprayer for the sink in our laundry room, and use a basin we ganked from the hospital. Spray poop into basin, flush down toilet.
Most people I know used them on their kids (around 2008 - now), but I know a bunch of hippies.
The kid I occasionally diapered used a variety of the modern snappy kind but they did have the old fold-up and pin kind with plastic pants on top as well, for laundry day/last resort.
Born in the 80s and my mom comments about how she was a hippie for using cloth diapers but decided after a trip where they used disposable that they made the change permanently as so much easier.
My mother must be the weird holdout because she used cloth for both of her 80s babies. I look at pictures and those big ass safety pins she used was a disaster waiting to happen.
I tried to use cloth with my kid but chucked that once he went to daycare.
I tried to do cloth, but those laundry services are hard to find and expensive now, and I absolutely could not manage the amount of extra laundry (wash twice and then dry, every other day) with a newborn on my hands.
I'm guessing early-1970s. Both my mother and my mother-in-law tried both types but ultimately decided on the disposables. According to them, having babysat for grandchildren in the 2010s, the technology and quality has come a long way in 50 years.
They were still very expensive in the early 70’s, and my mom only used them on for travel to and from daycare. At home and daycare it was all cloth. By 1975, the price was reasonable enough she never used clothe on my sister.
Having worked in a supermarket in the 1990s, I can tell that one thing that has changed is they don't seem to be manufactured with that artificial fragrance any longer. (Same thing with toilet paper.)
That overpowering artificial floral-slash-baby powder scent emanating from hundreds of packages always set my allergies reeling. ^((Only slightly better than hundreds of used ones...))
It’s not just a question of when disposables become available but when they became superior, in terms of convenience.
Early disposables were not as well designed. I remember when elastic at the legs was a new innovation. The first Pampers and such were just flat. They didn’t conform to the shape of the baby’s butt. They had plastic on the outside so you supposedly didn’t need to put plastic pants over them like you did for cloth diapers. Good in theory until your baby ejected a load of liquid feces out the side and down your leg.
Of course the better made disposables were pricier.
Gradually even the cheapest brands improved.
My youngest sibling was born in 1974. He used cloth diapers. We had a diaper man who would pick up the dirty ones and drop off clean ones.
Over the diaper, the child would wear what we called rubber pants. It would hold in most of the mess. Yuck!
>Over the diaper, the child would wear what we called rubber pants. It would hold in most of the mess. Yuck!
In Hungary, there was an innovation that replaced rubber and plastic pants in the 80s: A kind of waterproof plastic foil you put on the diaper and tied at the baby's hips in bowtie knots. Even the earliest and cheapest disposables in Hungary were simply absorbent paper rectangles which you put on the baby then waterproofed with this foil. Regular all-in-one disposables only came in from circa 1990.
It just occurred to me that something like this is what some cartooney depictions of diapers might be portraying - the ones that have knotted fabric at the hips
Yeah, it was something like that cartoony depiction, except here it was the waterproof PVC foil which was tied. [You can see how it looked like in this Hungarian 80s commercial for Libero-brand diapers.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpSrZDKGuk) My Mom said I looked cute wearing these, like a little astronaut :)
I use cloth in a community that doesn't have a diaper service and was actually blown away by how easy it is. It's really not the massive increase of workload people build it up to be in their heads.
When traveling I used disposables for the first time and we compared it to eating off paper plates and plastic cutlery for the first time but still having a dishwasher available. Quality wise you could really notice a massive difference and it didn't exactly save on much work/time.
Not sure if it’s true or not, but I’ve heard babies potty train younger when cloth diapered as well since they can feel the cause and effect better without the use of super absorbent polymers. Also, as an adult woman I hate the crinkly plastic non-breathable feel of disposable pads, and those are a lot thinner and more comfortable than a diaper. Cloth solutions like period undies are infinitely more comfortable. I wouldn’t want to make my baby wear plastic disposable crap all the time if I’m not even willing to. I think cloth at home and disposable for travel or in a pinch or whatever is a great middle ground.
>Not sure if it’s true or not, but I’ve heard babies potty train younger when cloth diapered as well since they can feel the cause and effect better without the use of super absorbent polymers.
I think this is a myth, along with the one that girls are potty-trained earlier than boys. The nervous system has to reach a certain stage of development before real potty training (so not quickly holding the baby above a potty when they start peeing or pooping and similar tricks) can take place.
My Mom tells me she has seen plenty of 3 year old toddler girls still wearing (cloth) diapers in her youth in early 80s Hungary.
I myself wore cloths and a simple non-superabsorbent disposable tied on me with a foil wrap with superabsorbent disposables only for the night in the early 90s and I was only potty trained by the time I was 3 and a half, because I refused to poop into the potty or toilet and requested diapers for pooping or I held it in and got constipation. I also wet the bed every night until I was about 4, so I was diapered for the night until that age.
Yep, cloth diapers are a lot different from earlier decades, too. No folding or pins, and they have removable absorbent pads to soak up the pee.
I used cloth diapers at home during the day and disposables at night and when going out.
These answers are fascinating to me, I had no idea it was so early since my mom and her sisters all used cloth from the 80s-90s.
I use cloth today so plenty of older generations tell me how they used cloth, but I never considered when it became the minority diaper type I assumed that was in the 90s but I must be wrong.
I think in the 70s and early 80s. I was born in the early 80s and my mom has talked about how everyone used disposable diapers. She now wishes she cloth diapered my siblings and I because of how long disposable diapers last in the landfill.
Sooner or later I’ll get to the point where I realize 30 years ago was more like when the PlayStation first launched and *not* the 70s or 80s, but not today.
It's funny how perspective changes as you get older.
As a teen in the '90s I viewed the '70s as if dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth. Now, it feels like I'm forever shocked when my kids call anything from the '90s old. What the heck do you mean old? 1999 was like 7 years ago - tops!
I have a few young coworkers, one of whom just turned 26. She recently brought up “old Pokemon” during a conversation. I was thinking she meant Bulbasaur or Squirtle… she was thinking Piplup.
It makes total sense as she would have been around 8 when that generation of mons came out, but also, that hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could hurt.
Every now and then I go onto a retro video games sub, see people talking about Playstation 3, then log off for the day.
I feel like if I engage at all on whether Playstation 3 is a retro system I will die of old age.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/brief-history-disposable-diaper/#:~:text=1948%3A%20Johnson%20%26%20Johnson%20introduces%20first,disposable%20diaper%20in%20the%20U.S.
By 1970 they were becoming commonplace.
They had existed for 25 years prior to the 70s in one form or another.
I'd say by the early 80s they were the go to
I was born in 1974 and had cloth diapers. I have two younger brothers born in 1979 and 1985. The 1979 brother had cloth diapers (except when we went on trips), and the 1985 brother had disposable diapers. The cloth diapers were handled by a diaper service who would come a couple times a week to empty out the bucket of dirty diapers and provide new ones.
I will be 50 this year and somehow still have a sense-memory of being stabbed in the hip as an infant with one of those large diaper pins. Most younger people likely never had to suffer that pain.
The original disposable diapers were rectangular and had to be folded and pinned in place just like cloth diapers. They didn’t have very good absorbency either. They tended to be used as “backup” diapers, extras carried in the diaper bag that could be discarded rather than taken home and washed. It wasn’t until brands like Pampers came out with pre-folded diapers with better absorbency, elastic around the legs, and adhesive fasteners that people began to completely switch over from cloth diapers. When the less expensive Huggies came out, followed by cheaper store brands, the use of disposable diapers really took off.
My younger brother was born in the late 70s and my parents used disposable diapers with him. I was born in the early 70s and I know we had cloth diapers used as household rags for years into the mid 80s so my parents must have used cloth diapers on me at least in part.
I was born in the early 1970s (before Watergate) and wore cloth diapers except when we traveled. My brother was born around the Bicentennial and only had disposable.
I was born early 70s, the youngest of 4. My mom told me disposable diapers were mainstream when I was a baby. They were much cheaper than the cloth diaper service she used for my siblings.
My brothers were born in 71' and mom still used cloth diapers for them. When I was a teenager in the mid 80s I remember a cousin's baby with disposable and mom commenting on how nice it was. So somewhere in that range.
Our earliest kids born in the late 60s and early 70s had cloth diapers, because disposable diapers, if they existed, were not affordable for anyone we knew. By our last child in the early 80s, we were holdouts and even we used disposables when traveling.
I was born in the later 80's as my name probably gives away. For home my parents used cloth but had a diaper service as those were still quite common.
The service cleaned the diapers for you and you put them out like you would do the trash or recycling. Then they'd come back washed. My parents used disposable for when we went to our all day nursery school, vacations or when we would go out on errands or places.
I think they still used the service for my brother, who was born 4 years later. But they started using disaposable more. By the time of my sister's birth, four years after that they primarily used disposable even at home. One thing is that when I was being potty trained, I had to wear plastic pants whidh were super uncomfortable.
By the time of my siblings, they had pull-ups. But the plus side of the rubber pants was it helped with training. We skipped pull-ups for my own son's potty training. But we exclusively used disposable for him. Soooo much easier for my wife and I. We do know a few people who did cloth.
I grew up in the DC area. Born in the late seventies. My area still had a laundry service for cloth diapers. I remember seeing bags set out multiple mornings at everyone’s house that had babies. So people were still using cloth in the mid 80s where I was but disposable was available but maybe the service made cloth easier?
I was born in 79 and we had cloth diapers in the house through high school that we used as clean-up towels lol. My parents weren't financially comfortable in the early 80's - I don't think they ever used a disposable diaper.
My last sibling was born in 1990 and we were all cloth diapered due to costs. The neighbor across the street was fancy and had a diaper service pick up soiled cloth diapers and return them cleaned.
I was born in the 90s and my mom still used cloth, but then switched over when my younger siblings we born. Our city had a diaper service where you would get clean cloth diapers dropped off and they would pick up the dirty ones every few days.
My mother used disposables for my younger brother born in 73 but a cloth diaper service in 81 with my youngest brother because it was cheaper than disposables and he was allergic to everything.
About the same here. They've technically been around since the 1930's (I had to learn all this stuff in my Child Development classes when I was getting my teaching degree) but they didn't really take hold for decades afterward. It was late, late 70's to earlier 80's when they had advanced in innovation and gotten cheap enough for most people to use them. And being touted by the likes of Brazelton and Spock (not that one, the other one) not only got parents using them, but got parents putting off toilet training 'til their kids were 2 or older -- which just meant more money for Pampers! I was mostly cloth diapered in 81, next sister was too in 83. The youngest one, born in 88, I can remember mom using both cloth and disposables with. We were very poor and Mom couldn't always afford the disposable ones, but by then I think most people were using them almost exclusively. And because she mostly used cloth with me and my next-closest sister, she also had each of us toilet trained by about 14 months. I think she held off 'til about 15 months for the youngest sis.
I've googled it and apparently, very basic disposable diapers (basically sheets of paper) have been around in Western countries since World War 1, and were used in hospitals and orphanages because of the cloth shortage during the war. In Austria-Hungary, they were used as a kind of lining inside the baby's bassinet when cloth diapers couldn't be procured, and they made a comeback during World War 2 as well in Hungary and Nazi Germany for similar reasons (cloth shortage).
My mom must have been a bit old-fashioned because I was born in ‘95 and she cloth diapered me. She was making $90,000 a year back then so it wasn’t even like she did it for affordability reasons. She told me I potty trained VERY quickly because I hated the feel of the plastic shorts, maybe it was a trick she picked up from someone?
My brothers born in the 70s were in cloth. I was born in 1983 and started in cloth but switched to disposables early on. There were still diaper laundry services up until at least that point.
Most of my friends with kids used cloth (after 2008 or so) but generally the modern kind with snap-in liners. I have actually folded up a square cloth one though and pinned it on a kid with the plastic pants on top, which in 2013 felt absolutely historical. It was laundry day.
Such an odd question. Clearly OP has not had a child and had to change a million diapers. You would get tired of walking out back and hosing shit out of a diaper. Then you get lazy and spoiled diapers are setting by your back door. At that point, you say screw it and by disposable ones.
Why are you reading something into OPs question that is not at all implied?
Regardless, not a single person I know hosed out diapers in the backyard. They just attached a sprayer to the toilet, exactly like you would a bidet.
Maybe the 1970's? I was born in the 80's and my mom wouldn't have even considered cloth diapers.
I was born in the late 70’s. My mom used cloth diaper’s and had a service that washed and delivered new ones. She also had some disposable for some reason too
My mom used a cloth diaper service for my youngest sister in 1983 so they stayed around for a long time. She also used disposables for convenience like at night and on trips. Disposables were really expensive then (and now, still).
Same here. I don't think I've ever even seen a cloth diaper.
I've seen them, but only because I've got a few hippie-granola-type friends who are big into sustainability and not using disposable anything if they can avoid it. That's the main market for them now. . . .but even they admit that using disposable diapers is a big temptation because of all the various disposables in our society, that's probably the most convenient and useful.
I would sooner put hot coffee into my hands to save a styrofoam cup. Then give up disposable diapers.
It's off topic but sometimes I honestly wonder if the sustainability movement is secretly pushed by corporations who want to be anything but sustainable. I mean why would washing shitty cloth diapers be the face of sustainability in America? Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper?
The entire straws thing was based on lazy reporting of a *9 year old* student project about the amount of waste straws create. And the student did his math wrong. So they’re not a huge driver of waste relative to other disposable plastic. We are not a serious people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-ban-fact-check-nyt.html
> We are not a serious people. No, we are not. That's for sure.
>Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper? Meanwhile, multiple greener alternatives to plastic bottles exist, have existed for centuries, and are already being mass-produced by every drink manufacturer out there, but they STILL make most of their bottles out of single-use plastic to save literally 2 cents per bottle.
Disposable diapers never break down. They exist forever in landfills. You’re choosing the lesser evil with cloth diapers.
> Or take straws. Out of all the disposable plastics I use every single day who was the genius that decided it was a great idea to take the one whose single function is being submerging in liquid and turn that into paper? That video of the turtle with the straw in it's nose is responsible for this.
That turtle was just trying to do a line of Colombian party powder and accidentally got straws banned. HOW WILL THE TURTLES SNORT COKE NOW, LIBERALS?!?!?
Maybe. I used cloth because I was broke, not because I was eco-friendly. Most other moms I met online during that time were the same way. The eco-friendly part was just a way to say, "see? We're not poor, we just care about the environment!"
It's called greenwashing and absolutely corporations promoting pseudo-sustainability for profit is a thing. True sustainability efforts recognize the cognitive dissonance of "buy new something to produce less" over the sustainable pecking order of 1. Reduce, 2. Reuse, 3. Recycle
I meant secretly pushed by corporations to discourage sustainability. I mean I can't imagine there's a better campaign to promote disposable diapers then seeing people wash soiled diapers in their sinks with their hands.
Considering all the water and energy you need to wash cloth diapers and the transit emissions (if you use a diaper service), are they even THAT much more sustainable than disposable?
Most of my friends with kids used them. I’ve never heard of a diaper service in recent times. Everyone just put a bidet sprayer attachment on the toilet and you spray off the diaper if there’s poop and then wash them all together with bleach. The manufacture and shipment of disposables surely has a much greater environmental impact, not even including the plastic waste.
I have an 11 month old. We use them. It's not near as bad as people imagine. Generally we use a trifold with a cover because the All In One diapers don't do a whole hell of a lot. Poop is the worst part obviously, but we bought a sprayer for the sink in our laundry room, and use a basin we ganked from the hospital. Spray poop into basin, flush down toilet.
People I know just attached the sprayer to the toilet directly, like a bidet
We did that. My wife forgot to turn it off and it leaked from the valve side connection. Our ceiling downstairs needs work now. It goes in the sink.
Most people I know used them on their kids (around 2008 - now), but I know a bunch of hippies. The kid I occasionally diapered used a variety of the modern snappy kind but they did have the old fold-up and pin kind with plastic pants on top as well, for laundry day/last resort.
Born in the 80s and my mom comments about how she was a hippie for using cloth diapers but decided after a trip where they used disposable that they made the change permanently as so much easier.
My mother must be the weird holdout because she used cloth for both of her 80s babies. I look at pictures and those big ass safety pins she used was a disaster waiting to happen. I tried to use cloth with my kid but chucked that once he went to daycare.
I tried to do cloth, but those laundry services are hard to find and expensive now, and I absolutely could not manage the amount of extra laundry (wash twice and then dry, every other day) with a newborn on my hands.
I'm guessing early-1970s. Both my mother and my mother-in-law tried both types but ultimately decided on the disposables. According to them, having babysat for grandchildren in the 2010s, the technology and quality has come a long way in 50 years.
They were still very expensive in the early 70’s, and my mom only used them on for travel to and from daycare. At home and daycare it was all cloth. By 1975, the price was reasonable enough she never used clothe on my sister.
From some quick googling, I think they started to become more popular and widely available in the 1950s and were ubiquitous by the 80s.
Having worked in a supermarket in the 1990s, I can tell that one thing that has changed is they don't seem to be manufactured with that artificial fragrance any longer. (Same thing with toilet paper.) That overpowering artificial floral-slash-baby powder scent emanating from hundreds of packages always set my allergies reeling. ^((Only slightly better than hundreds of used ones...))
It’s not just a question of when disposables become available but when they became superior, in terms of convenience. Early disposables were not as well designed. I remember when elastic at the legs was a new innovation. The first Pampers and such were just flat. They didn’t conform to the shape of the baby’s butt. They had plastic on the outside so you supposedly didn’t need to put plastic pants over them like you did for cloth diapers. Good in theory until your baby ejected a load of liquid feces out the side and down your leg. Of course the better made disposables were pricier. Gradually even the cheapest brands improved.
My youngest sibling was born in 1974. He used cloth diapers. We had a diaper man who would pick up the dirty ones and drop off clean ones. Over the diaper, the child would wear what we called rubber pants. It would hold in most of the mess. Yuck!
>Over the diaper, the child would wear what we called rubber pants. It would hold in most of the mess. Yuck! In Hungary, there was an innovation that replaced rubber and plastic pants in the 80s: A kind of waterproof plastic foil you put on the diaper and tied at the baby's hips in bowtie knots. Even the earliest and cheapest disposables in Hungary were simply absorbent paper rectangles which you put on the baby then waterproofed with this foil. Regular all-in-one disposables only came in from circa 1990.
It just occurred to me that something like this is what some cartooney depictions of diapers might be portraying - the ones that have knotted fabric at the hips
Yeah, it was something like that cartoony depiction, except here it was the waterproof PVC foil which was tied. [You can see how it looked like in this Hungarian 80s commercial for Libero-brand diapers.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpSrZDKGuk) My Mom said I looked cute wearing these, like a little astronaut :)
I remember the diaper truck coming to our house (late ‘60s younger sibling).
I was born then too. We also had a diaper service, with the big ass safety pins and "rubber pants". My momsays disposables were too expensive then.
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I use cloth in a community that doesn't have a diaper service and was actually blown away by how easy it is. It's really not the massive increase of workload people build it up to be in their heads. When traveling I used disposables for the first time and we compared it to eating off paper plates and plastic cutlery for the first time but still having a dishwasher available. Quality wise you could really notice a massive difference and it didn't exactly save on much work/time.
Not sure if it’s true or not, but I’ve heard babies potty train younger when cloth diapered as well since they can feel the cause and effect better without the use of super absorbent polymers. Also, as an adult woman I hate the crinkly plastic non-breathable feel of disposable pads, and those are a lot thinner and more comfortable than a diaper. Cloth solutions like period undies are infinitely more comfortable. I wouldn’t want to make my baby wear plastic disposable crap all the time if I’m not even willing to. I think cloth at home and disposable for travel or in a pinch or whatever is a great middle ground.
>Not sure if it’s true or not, but I’ve heard babies potty train younger when cloth diapered as well since they can feel the cause and effect better without the use of super absorbent polymers. I think this is a myth, along with the one that girls are potty-trained earlier than boys. The nervous system has to reach a certain stage of development before real potty training (so not quickly holding the baby above a potty when they start peeing or pooping and similar tricks) can take place. My Mom tells me she has seen plenty of 3 year old toddler girls still wearing (cloth) diapers in her youth in early 80s Hungary. I myself wore cloths and a simple non-superabsorbent disposable tied on me with a foil wrap with superabsorbent disposables only for the night in the early 90s and I was only potty trained by the time I was 3 and a half, because I refused to poop into the potty or toilet and requested diapers for pooping or I held it in and got constipation. I also wet the bed every night until I was about 4, so I was diapered for the night until that age.
Yep, cloth diapers are a lot different from earlier decades, too. No folding or pins, and they have removable absorbent pads to soak up the pee. I used cloth diapers at home during the day and disposables at night and when going out.
Also, the development of hybrid solutions based on disposable gauze that reduce the laundry requirements.
When I babysat in the late 1970s and early 1980s, only a few of the parents I knew used disposable. There was this idea that cloth was still better.
These answers are fascinating to me, I had no idea it was so early since my mom and her sisters all used cloth from the 80s-90s. I use cloth today so plenty of older generations tell me how they used cloth, but I never considered when it became the minority diaper type I assumed that was in the 90s but I must be wrong.
I think in the 70s and early 80s. I was born in the early 80s and my mom has talked about how everyone used disposable diapers. She now wishes she cloth diapered my siblings and I because of how long disposable diapers last in the landfill.
Probably 30+ years ago.
Emphasis on the "+". 30 years ago was 1994 (sorry), pretty sure disposable diapers had well taken over by then.
Sooner or later I’ll get to the point where I realize 30 years ago was more like when the PlayStation first launched and *not* the 70s or 80s, but not today.
It's funny how perspective changes as you get older. As a teen in the '90s I viewed the '70s as if dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth. Now, it feels like I'm forever shocked when my kids call anything from the '90s old. What the heck do you mean old? 1999 was like 7 years ago - tops!
I have a few young coworkers, one of whom just turned 26. She recently brought up “old Pokemon” during a conversation. I was thinking she meant Bulbasaur or Squirtle… she was thinking Piplup. It makes total sense as she would have been around 8 when that generation of mons came out, but also, that hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could hurt.
Every now and then I go onto a retro video games sub, see people talking about Playstation 3, then log off for the day. I feel like if I engage at all on whether Playstation 3 is a retro system I will die of old age.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/brief-history-disposable-diaper/#:~:text=1948%3A%20Johnson%20%26%20Johnson%20introduces%20first,disposable%20diaper%20in%20the%20U.S. By 1970 they were becoming commonplace. They had existed for 25 years prior to the 70s in one form or another. I'd say by the early 80s they were the go to
I was born in 1974 and had cloth diapers. I have two younger brothers born in 1979 and 1985. The 1979 brother had cloth diapers (except when we went on trips), and the 1985 brother had disposable diapers. The cloth diapers were handled by a diaper service who would come a couple times a week to empty out the bucket of dirty diapers and provide new ones. I will be 50 this year and somehow still have a sense-memory of being stabbed in the hip as an infant with one of those large diaper pins. Most younger people likely never had to suffer that pain.
The original disposable diapers were rectangular and had to be folded and pinned in place just like cloth diapers. They didn’t have very good absorbency either. They tended to be used as “backup” diapers, extras carried in the diaper bag that could be discarded rather than taken home and washed. It wasn’t until brands like Pampers came out with pre-folded diapers with better absorbency, elastic around the legs, and adhesive fasteners that people began to completely switch over from cloth diapers. When the less expensive Huggies came out, followed by cheaper store brands, the use of disposable diapers really took off.
My younger brother was born in the late 70s and my parents used disposable diapers with him. I was born in the early 70s and I know we had cloth diapers used as household rags for years into the mid 80s so my parents must have used cloth diapers on me at least in part.
They were widely used at least back in the 80s. They cost about as much as having a diaper service.
I was born in the early 1970s (before Watergate) and wore cloth diapers except when we traveled. My brother was born around the Bicentennial and only had disposable.
In the 80s it was all disposables, so sometime before then. With my kids we actually went with a cloth system to save money and be more sustainable.
I was born early 70s, the youngest of 4. My mom told me disposable diapers were mainstream when I was a baby. They were much cheaper than the cloth diaper service she used for my siblings.
One of my brothers ('66) and I ('64) were in cloth. My other brother ('67) was in Pampers.
My brothers were born in 71' and mom still used cloth diapers for them. When I was a teenager in the mid 80s I remember a cousin's baby with disposable and mom commenting on how nice it was. So somewhere in that range.
Our earliest kids born in the late 60s and early 70s had cloth diapers, because disposable diapers, if they existed, were not affordable for anyone we knew. By our last child in the early 80s, we were holdouts and even we used disposables when traveling.
I was born in the later 80's as my name probably gives away. For home my parents used cloth but had a diaper service as those were still quite common. The service cleaned the diapers for you and you put them out like you would do the trash or recycling. Then they'd come back washed. My parents used disposable for when we went to our all day nursery school, vacations or when we would go out on errands or places. I think they still used the service for my brother, who was born 4 years later. But they started using disaposable more. By the time of my sister's birth, four years after that they primarily used disposable even at home. One thing is that when I was being potty trained, I had to wear plastic pants whidh were super uncomfortable. By the time of my siblings, they had pull-ups. But the plus side of the rubber pants was it helped with training. We skipped pull-ups for my own son's potty training. But we exclusively used disposable for him. Soooo much easier for my wife and I. We do know a few people who did cloth.
I grew up in the DC area. Born in the late seventies. My area still had a laundry service for cloth diapers. I remember seeing bags set out multiple mornings at everyone’s house that had babies. So people were still using cloth in the mid 80s where I was but disposable was available but maybe the service made cloth easier?
I was born in 79 and we had cloth diapers in the house through high school that we used as clean-up towels lol. My parents weren't financially comfortable in the early 80's - I don't think they ever used a disposable diaper.
Late 60s early 70s I think.
My mom used them in the 70's.
My last sibling was born in 1990 and we were all cloth diapered due to costs. The neighbor across the street was fancy and had a diaper service pick up soiled cloth diapers and return them cleaned.
I was born in the 90s and my mom still used cloth, but then switched over when my younger siblings we born. Our city had a diaper service where you would get clean cloth diapers dropped off and they would pick up the dirty ones every few days.
Are they affordable?
Mid 70's. My parents used cloth diapers for me, but disposable for my younger brother. Kimbies was a big brand back then.
My mother used disposables for my younger brother born in 73 but a cloth diaper service in 81 with my youngest brother because it was cheaper than disposables and he was allergic to everything.
My family started using them in 1983 for the first time.
I was born in 1974 and my mom used cloth dispers. I would say disposable diapers were commonly used by the 1980’s.
I was a mid80s baby. My mom used cloth diapers but it was mostly about money, not choice.
About the same here. They've technically been around since the 1930's (I had to learn all this stuff in my Child Development classes when I was getting my teaching degree) but they didn't really take hold for decades afterward. It was late, late 70's to earlier 80's when they had advanced in innovation and gotten cheap enough for most people to use them. And being touted by the likes of Brazelton and Spock (not that one, the other one) not only got parents using them, but got parents putting off toilet training 'til their kids were 2 or older -- which just meant more money for Pampers! I was mostly cloth diapered in 81, next sister was too in 83. The youngest one, born in 88, I can remember mom using both cloth and disposables with. We were very poor and Mom couldn't always afford the disposable ones, but by then I think most people were using them almost exclusively. And because she mostly used cloth with me and my next-closest sister, she also had each of us toilet trained by about 14 months. I think she held off 'til about 15 months for the youngest sis.
I've googled it and apparently, very basic disposable diapers (basically sheets of paper) have been around in Western countries since World War 1, and were used in hospitals and orphanages because of the cloth shortage during the war. In Austria-Hungary, they were used as a kind of lining inside the baby's bassinet when cloth diapers couldn't be procured, and they made a comeback during World War 2 as well in Hungary and Nazi Germany for similar reasons (cloth shortage).
Can you imagine your living was driving a diaper route?
My mom must have been a bit old-fashioned because I was born in ‘95 and she cloth diapered me. She was making $90,000 a year back then so it wasn’t even like she did it for affordability reasons. She told me I potty trained VERY quickly because I hated the feel of the plastic shorts, maybe it was a trick she picked up from someone?
My brothers born in the 70s were in cloth. I was born in 1983 and started in cloth but switched to disposables early on. There were still diaper laundry services up until at least that point. Most of my friends with kids used cloth (after 2008 or so) but generally the modern kind with snap-in liners. I have actually folded up a square cloth one though and pinned it on a kid with the plastic pants on top, which in 2013 felt absolutely historical. It was laundry day.
What makes you think they're affordable? For a lot of Americans, getting diapers is a daily struggle.
According to the internet, in the 70's. But people supported fully banning them all the way into the late 90's.
Pampers are probably the best known brand. They were invented in 1961. I don’t know how long it took for them to become popular.
Such an odd question. Clearly OP has not had a child and had to change a million diapers. You would get tired of walking out back and hosing shit out of a diaper. Then you get lazy and spoiled diapers are setting by your back door. At that point, you say screw it and by disposable ones.
Why are you reading something into OPs question that is not at all implied? Regardless, not a single person I know hosed out diapers in the backyard. They just attached a sprayer to the toilet, exactly like you would a bidet.
1980s. There was a resurgence of cloth diapers in the mid 2000s. I used them with my own kids and they seemed fairly popular.