When did disposable diapers become commonplace?

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Kieran

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I was just wondering really, about when disposable diapers became more commonly used than their previous equivalents (in the West, at least).

They had been in common use for a quite long time by my time (I was born in the U.K. in the late 1990s)
 
Well, I was born in 76 and it was pretty common even then for parents to use disposable diapers, at least for in big cities and suburbs. There were, and still are, a lot of cloth hold outs at that time though, but I'd say disposable were probably more used than cloth sometime around the late 70's or early 80's.
 
I think in the 1960's it became common. You could change and just throw away and not having to wash them and dry them or even soak them or boil them. My grandma used to boil cloth diapers to kill the bacteria and to keep them from smelling. My husband wore disposable too and he was born in 1975 and my parents used cloth on me but found it too much work so they switched to disposable. But back then they only came in boxes than cases so there were like 12 diapers to a box so I can imagine that must have been a lot of shopping trips they've had to do or buy multiple packs of them. I didn't start to see diapers being sold in cases until maybe 4th grade because I had a next door neighbor that had a little boy and she bought Pampers cases.

Plus I think the 1960's because I have seen old black and white photos of Vanessa's Redgrave's children from when they were toddlers and their diapers looked disposable and in Bewitched you sometimes could see baby Tabatha's diaper and it also looked disposable so it might have gotten popular then too when everyone was switching to disposable.
 
Slomo said:
Well, I was born in 76 and it was pretty common even then for parents to use disposable diapers, at least for in big cities and suburbs. There were, and still are, a lot of cloth hold outs at that time though, but I'd say disposable were probably more used than cloth sometime around the late 70's or early 80's.

I was born in '76 too! Both me and my younger sister wore cloth diapers. I think they were common back then, but most (>50%) parents had probably switched to disposables by around 1980, I reckon. (Although I really have no idea!)
 
Calico said:
I think in the 1960's it became common. You could change and just throw away and not having to wash them and dry them or even soak them or boil them. My grandma used to boil cloth diapers to kill the bacteria and to keep them from smelling. My husband wore disposable too and he was born in 1975 and my parents used cloth on me but found it too much work so they switched to disposable. But back then they only came in boxes than cases so there were like 12 diapers to a box so I can imagine that must have been a lot of shopping trips they've had to do or buy multiple packs of them. I didn't start to see diapers being sold in cases until maybe 4th grade because I had a next door neighbor that had a little boy and she bought Pampers cases.

Plus I think the 1960's because I have seen old black and white photos of Vanessa's Redgrave's children from when they were toddlers and their diapers looked disposable and in Bewitched you sometimes could see baby Tabatha's diaper and it also looked disposable so it might have gotten popular then too when everyone was switching to disposable.

I think that the early disposables (c.1960s), although available in most places, were not nearly as reliable as the later ones. Also, they weren't so cheap.

My parents were both born in 1967 (in Scotland and Italy) and I'm pretty certain their parents used the cloth diapers on them.
 
Kieran said:
I think that the early disposables (c.1960s), although available in most places, were not nearly as reliable as the later ones. Also, they weren't so cheap.

My parents were both born in 1967 (in Scotland and Italy) and I'm pretty certain their parents used the cloth diapers on them.

Maybe only wealthy people used disposables and Bewitched is just a TV show.
 
My girlfriend's sister was born in 1990 and she claims that, by that point, disposables were used by everyone except 'environment extremists'.
 
We raised 5 kids all born in the 70's all in cloth diapers, we always bought 2 dozen new cloth diapers for the babies when they were born and thats all we ever had to buy, God bless my wife for doing the laundry back then.
 
I was born in 79, and believe i was in cloth mostly, don't know if i used disposables cant remember. As i told older i remember seeing old cloths around the house (used as rags).

I was also the youngest of 4, so i also suspect i used hand me downs
 
If I had to guess, I'd say disposable diapers were more common than cloth probably by the early to mid-1980's.
 
tiny said:
.... but most (>50%) parents had probably switched to disposables by around 1980, I reckon. (Although I really have no idea!)
nay, Mr. Wilks!
(btw, a good question and the answer/recollection of which goes to show the lag of the UK behind the US in consumer technology and the modern socio-economy)

i was born in '71 and got into nappies at around age 7. the first i remember of dispies being a thing was in around 1982 (no details, but that was the first time that i ever saw one); and througout the 80's, the issue of trads-versus-dispies, and with such a tellingness of good/bad motherhood, raged. when dispies overtook trads is possibly a bit murky, but i remember a late 80's breakfast tv spot about modern children's clothing and how such were cut (designed) for wearing over disposables as they were 'now' more commonly used than trads.
of course, with the 80's also spawning the rise of the teenage mum, who all (by all practical measure) opted for dispies, the death knell was sounding for trads. my former neighbour, being a tad older than many and married, used trads on her kids, in the late 80's and early 90's. i'm trying to remember, or at least slap a point in time down, but my sister had moved out and i'd then taken her bedroom as mine, and summers saw me awaking to the sight of square nappies on nextdoor's washing line. she was/is a bit of a dizzy bitch and would often leave them out overnight; naturally, with me suffering only the use of towels, the temptation was too great and i nabbed one (such 'suffering' being bit ironic in that i now claim that towels are so much better than any of the nappies available to buy, for child or adult). that must've been around 1990.
and it was certainly around 89/90 that i began to lament what i could see as the end of an era, for trad nappies and many other things. just a few years before, i had often been mightily jealous of some kid down the road who had been in nappies at night, and his nappies and plastic-pants were always out on the line; and they weren't no cheap plackies, like what i was used to: they were Mothercare, motherffffff....thingymajiggers (i got told off today for swearing, but feck 'em :biggrin:), with plush elastics!!!!!
the early 90's saw Mothercare begin to lessen it's range of trad stuff. i was sort of sad (especially as i never got around to buying those posh pants), but i had also outgrown the babywear (plastic-pants need to be puffy when worn or they'll rip). by the time of the MegaDrive (1990 or 91), i was regularly using dispies (ya, it's always been a gamer thing) (Cosifits and a local make, if you were wondering).

can't remember owt else, fer t' mo'.
 
ade said:
nay, Mr. Wilks!
(btw, a good question and the answer/recollection of which goes to show the lag of the UK behind the US in consumer technology and the modern socio-economy)

i was born in '71 and got into nappies at around age 7. the first i remember of dispies being a thing was in around 1982 (no details, but that was the first time that i ever saw one); and througout the 80's, the issue of trads-versus-dispies, and with such a tellingness of good/bad motherhood, raged. when dispies overtook trads is possibly a bit murky, but i remember a late 80's breakfast tv spot about modern children's clothing and how such were cut (designed) for wearing over disposables as they were 'now' more commonly used than trads.
of course, with the 80's also spawning the rise of the teenage mum, who all (by all practical measure) opted for dispies, the death knell was sounding for trads. my former neighbour, being a tad older than many and married, used trads on her kids, in the late 80's and early 90's. i'm trying to remember, or at least slap a point in time down, but my sister had moved out and i'd then taken her bedroom as mine, and summers saw me awaking to the sight of square nappies on nextdoor's washing line. she was/is a bit of a dizzy bitch and would often leave them out overnight; naturally, with me suffering only the use of towels, the temptation was too great and i nabbed one (such 'suffering' being bit ironic in that i now claim that towels are so much better than any of the nappies available to buy, for child or adult). that must've been around 1990.
and it was certainly around 89/90 that i began to lament what i could see as the end of an era, for trad nappies and many other things. just a few years before, i had often been mightily jealous of some kid down the road who had been in nappies at night, and his nappies and plastic-pants were always out on the line; and they weren't no cheap plackies, like what i was used to: they were Mothercare, motherffffff....thingymajiggers (i got told off today for swearing, but feck 'em :biggrin:), with plush elastics!!!!!
the early 90's saw Mothercare begin to lessen it's range of trad stuff. i was sort of sad (especially as i never got around to buying those posh pants), but i had also outgrown the babywear (plastic-pants need to be puffy when worn or they'll rip). by the time of the MegaDrive (1990 or 91), i was regularly using dispies (ya, it's always been a gamer thing) (Cosifits and a local make, if you were wondering).

can't remember owt else, fer t' mo'.

Interesting. Were you in an urban or rural area?

I'm thinking that, for obvious reasons,it would have taken longer for 'dispies' to have come into common use in the rural areas than the urban ones.

My girlfriend's sister insists that 'basically no one' still used the disposable ones by her time (1990). She was born in London, to Swedish parents (I don't know about the status of disposables in Sweden).
 
Kieran said:
Interesting. Were you in an urban or rural area?

on the edge :biggrin:
no, seriously and literally: i'm in the Pennines, on a hillside. look one way and it's hill-farms and moorland, look the other and it's mills and chimneys.
a number of the surviving mills turned their hands to modern disposable products, including disposable nappies, so we had/have some local brands.
 
Disposables were commonplace in the US suburbs in the 1970's. My brother and I wore a combination of cloth and disposables and we were born in the late 60's and early 70's. All my cousins and friends who had younger siblings born in the 70's wore disposables. They were then and continue to be much easier to deal with, especially when out and about. That's not to say cloth is inferior, far from it. Cloth is more absorbent and these days cloth diaper covers are so much better than they used to be.
 
I was born in 1970 and my mother used a semi-disposable called Flushabyes. She claimed it was the first generation of disposables. The idea is similar to Goodnights today, where a reusable panty was fitted with a disposable inner pad. The panty was more like a rubber pant, from what I understand.
 
JDCH said:
I was born in 1970 and my mother used a semi-disposable called Flushabyes. She claimed it was the first generation of disposables. The idea is similar to Goodnights today, where a reusable panty was fitted with a disposable inner pad. The panty was more like a rubber pant, from what I understand.

From earlier disposable days I vaguely remember public warnings against flushing used disposable diapers down the toilet. Don’t know if it was aimed at Flushabyes or perhaps second generation disposables that included a waterproof outer cover.
 
I grew up in the 60s and don't remember ever having disposable diapers or other disposable products for wetting. For bed wetting my parent just used a rubber sheet and absorbent pad on the bed after we were taken off diapers. For day wetting the post-diapers approach I recall was training pants worn under rubber pants, although this was ineffective.
 
As a teenage in the '60s, I was always on the lookout to find diapers and I remember there were lots of disposable diapers around. Our kids were born in the later '70s and we used disposables. There was no way we were going to deal with washing poopy cloth diapers!
 
I was born in the early 60's and my mom used cloth diapers and plastic pants. 3 out of 6 kids were bedwetters and cloth was used on us for that too. I remeber disposables became available in the mid to late 60's. Most parents used them for convenience when traveling so as not to have to carry around wet or soiled diapers. They became more mainstream in the early 70"s
 
I think mid '70s-early '80s is when they took off. Before my time. I'm from the heart of the disposable era.
 
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