Babies don't wear diapers in China. What do they wear? Chap pants...minus the gun holsters.
Why? Mainly it's because Chinese people think that it's unhealthy for the baby, and somewhat because they think that it's a waste. It's logical that sitting in your own filth can't be good for you. Disposable diapers were created to ease the burden of cloth diapers on the parents, rather than for the baby. And diapers are expensive and create an enormous amount of waste. But is the alternative better, and could it work in America?
The alternative is that a Chinese baby's butt to genitals are exposed constantly, sitting on shopping carts to public benches to the street. And that falls in the "can't be good, debatable how bad it is" category as well. It also means that they go when they go, so parents are holding babies over the floor of a supermarket as they poop. Clearly there is a public health risk (but I'm not sure if anyone is actually studying it here, since there are "bigger fish to fry" in that area).
I think that open pants wouldn't fly in America. We're very concerned about sanitation and hiding body functions from strangers (do we overdo it?). And with the technology behind diapers in the U.S., baby health is fine. I don't think that diapers would work in China now, because the good, "healthy" ones are too expensive for the majority of the population and it doesn't fit with their societal ideas.
Any concern about diapers, should really be about the waste and expense, to which there isn't a solution right now.
And if you're wondering how Chinese parents know when their baby needs to "make one," they tune into the small cues that a baby gives and learn to be attentive to these. But although it's a necessity for "open pant" parents, it's not exclusive, as attentive parents in general gain this skill.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting article on the design process and science behind the invention and improvement of the disposable diaper. Like all of his writing, it's about more than diapers. Enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's Smaller.
Note: There are no pictures with this article because I think that posting baby genitals could get me flagged as a predator, and I'm really not interested in that title unless it's because I'm a 45 year-old cougar with a 25 year-old pool boy.
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