I was a late-70s baby, as was my younger sister, and we were both in cloth diapers from birth to potty training. For the first year of my life, my parents used a diaper service: Seattle's Baby Diaper Service, which still exists (
although they now provide disposables). Mom occasionally used Pampers for outings, but mostly she looked down on the use of disposable diapers and considered them incredibly wasteful.
Shortly before my wife and I had our first child, a friend of my wife's announced that she and her husband, who were also expecting, would be using cloth diapers. We decided to do the same. My wife and her friend then spent a weekend together at our dining room table, both with sewing machines, making all of the cloth diapers out of old flannel bed sheets and bath towels! We purchased the covers new. Those one-size diapers lasted us through two kids, from the mid 2000s to early 2010s.
I don't remember ever feeling like we occupied some moral high ground because we were using cloth diapers. I
do remember thinking "Wow, this is saving us quite a bit of money!" And that was certainly true. I've heard from UK members here about the high prices of energy there, but it's a very different story in the States. Our combined energy, water, and detergent costs for cloth diapering were about $15/month, not much more than a single package of Pampers.
Our first child potty-trained almost spontaneously at only 20 months, going straight from diapers to underwear and even staying dry at night. Our second took a little longer, and ended up being a bedwetter until age 8. We did ultimately transition to Pull-Ups and then GoodNites, in large part because he seemed eager to take care of his own needs and was making a strong effort. Pretty quickly he was only using one or two of these a day, so we weren't spending a lot.
Often I'll hear people talk about the high cost of diapering their kids, or I'll see articles about how diapers are so expensive, and I'll briefly wonder why more people don't use cloth. But really, I get it. In a way, the cost of diapering is like a regressive tax. Cloth diapers, while being much less expensive to use, aren't always an option for people with low incomes. Low-income families often don't have their own laundry machines. Both parents work, the kids are in daycare, and daycare requires disposables. Wife and I were fortunate. My job afforded us the opportunity for her to be a stay-at-home mom, and she wanted that, so that's what we did. That basically allowed us to save a lot of money on diapers.
In short: I'm not religious about it. Nowadays I work from home, in a house with my own laundry machines, and I mainly wear cloth diapers. In many ways it's a luxury, and I understand that it's not something anybody can casually choose to do. I also think disposable diapers are fun and cute, and in certain situations more practical. I wear them periodically also.