Many people of all ages suffer reaction and feel chafed by modern diapers with built-in leg gathers and elastic. Nearly always the leg gathers are made deliberately stiff. The pseudo elastic or elastic polymer includes latex to which a large percentage are allergic.
The advantage to older classic diaper design is that they included no latex or leg gathers.
Sometimes people write diaper reviews, which can be useful freedom of expression. Sometimes those same people do not understand why their opinions are not accepted by diaper manufacturers.
Take Attends as an example. In 1981 when I needed to transition from wearing pinned gauze diapers to be at home to a disposable in my university dorm where I could not wash cloth diapers, the only adult diaper available small enough for me was Attends. At the time Attends were the leading brand although fewer retail stores stocked Small.
In those days no disposable diaper was stretchy. We all learned to deal with a lack of elastic at the legs and waist as we had with waterproof panties over our cloth diapers. The better brands of plastic panties even then used Lycra as the elastic which is intended to irritate less than traditional latex-based elastic.
What I noticed once I learned to sleep in Attends was that when I woke up there was no mark around my thighs from elastic. By the time I arrived at my dorm I was so happy with the feel of the Attends I had no craving for a return to cloth diapers and separate plastic panties. Sure, the downside without leg gathers is that we need to not over fill classic diapers.
Diapers designed for use by professional care givers assume the changes will be on schedule and immediately when necessary. That is a legal and ethical responsibility of the medical profession. Therefore it is not necessary to make such diapers with excessive capacity. It violates professional standards of care to leave a patient in the same diaper for 8 hours without a valid reason, such as sleeping at night when urine flow is naturally reduced.
Therefore the same design features that make a particular diaper of value to the purchasing agent of a hospital or other institution probably will be disliked by the ABDL community. This is why a few brands are designed, decorated and marketed for the ABDL community. Given the relative small size of this community such diapers will cost more because of a lack of scale reducing manufacturing and marketing cost.
Over the years I have met face to face with several designers of diapers. It well could be they dismiss my opinions. I have tried my best to study the available literature and remember the history of factory made diapers. Usually I am talking to these R&D people as an incontinent woman, since nearly always their corporate executives refuse to think their diapers are used by ABDL. A few years ago it was so refreshing when a famous adult diaper designer asked me how I would feel if he added some decoration to the tape he needed as the landing zone. My concern was how would he know the number to make? Could he stop a diaper machine to change the tape and still make money?
Okay, my suggestion to those chafed by modern diapers is to either go to the efort to find more classic styles without elastic and leg gathers, or make use of barrier creams and/or products such as Desitin. Perhaps if you were to wear diapers with leg gathers 24/7 your skin would become more resistant, but equally possible your skin would become overly-sensitized.
Think carefully what you really want from your diapers, okay?
STRONGLY dislike the "breathable" backing. They chaffe my sensitive legs.
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