California Passes First-Ever Bill To Give Poor Families Money For Diapers

[calinewarkwc69]

California could soon become the first state in the country to offer poor families some help with an expensive necessity: diapers.Diapers aren’t covered by food stamps - in California, they’re classified along with cigarettes and alcohol as invalid purchases - nor by the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program for low-income mothers.

Comments

[amw]

Dude I am all for giving some kind of benefits to parents, since they are doing the (literally) shitty job of ensuring our communities will survive into the future... But I can't see how calling disposable diapers a necessity and empowering the poor to be as wasteful and environmentally destructive as the middle class is something to celebrate.

[calinewarkwc69]

The article mentions that "Cloth diapers are not a viable alternative for many families, as laundromats won’t let people wash them and daycare centers usually require disposable ones."

Which is a problem in and of itself.

[amw]

It is definitely a problem in and of itself. It's not like some baby's pee stains have any more cooties than one of your other neighbors' cum stains. Public laundromats are public laundromats. No one likes em. Most renters need em. That's life. You probably get more germs from the beer glasses at your local dive bar. And don't get me started on privatized daycare and the lack of decent parental leave in the US

[moonshaz]

Why not just tax the rich a bit more and let the poor decide for themselves if they want to spend that extra cash on an energy star washer vs thousands of disposable diapers?

I already responded to this in another reply, but briefly, the problem with this is that it assumes that everyone has a place to put a washer, appropriate plumbing hookups, etc. This is not a safe assumption. With lower end rental housing, you're lucky in some cases if there are laundry facilities IN THE BUILDING (as opposed to having to drive across town to a laundromat.

[rhysande]

Plus, a lot of these families are homeless.

[lisasimpsonfan]

Besides calinewarkwc69 good points, cloth diapers are a huge money and time investment. It can run $300 or more just to get started with cloth diapering. And then the time to properly clean the diapers is something many working poor people don't have. After the solid waste is put in the toilet, the diapers have to be soaked. They are then washed twice. Once to clean out the soak water and a second time to clean the diapers and then need dried. The newer more expensive kind don't require as much folding but the older kind do. Cloth diapers are great if you have the time and access to what you need to clean them.

[moonshaz]

Not to mention, if you're living on a poverty level income, it's not always easy to scrounge up a pile of quarters to do laundry with. You can cheat with some things, like wearing a shirt for an extra day or rinsing your unmentionables out in the sink, but when you run out of cloth diapers those things HAVE to be washed naow.

Also, giving people a voucher that they can use to buy a nice washer, as someone else said, sounds good in theory, but it's based on the assumption that EVERYBODY has a place to put one, appropriate plumbing hookups, etc. And when you're talking about poor people, that's not a safe assumption at all.

[darth_eldritch]

Also there's the water bill with the washer.

[amw]

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this thread for educating me on all this stuff. I am really ignorant of what it takes to raise a child, and I'm grateful for those of you who are sacrificing 20+ years of your lives to do this so that our communities stay strong and vibrant.

I did want to reply to one thing you mentioned, though, and that is talking about giving people a "voucher" for a washer. It's the voucher thing that I am particularly not comfortable with. I know there are compassionate arguments for giving vouchers over cold hard cash, but I would always prefer that people receiving benefits be allowed to decide for themselves where that money should go.

[hikerpoet]

One other thing that makes it trickier logistically that no one has mentioned yet, is poorer families are more likely to work more than one job and longer hours (and jobs that tend to be far more exhausting physically) AND have longer, trickier commutes. Even putting laundromats aside, the logistics/time thing becomes tougher. Hell, even just the fact cloth diapers need to be changed more often is entangled with the "time" thing.

I mention this not to dogpile, but in part because it has been a great discussion, and just to have the points in case it comes up with someone else. And because you've got some great ideas for potential solutions!

[hikerpoet]

Oh, wait, someone did mention it, from a slightly different angle--my bad!

[chaya]

This. Like a lot of green options now, it's not viable for everyone.

[amw]

Again thank you (and to everyone else) for educating me on this stuff

[darth_eldritch]

It takes a lot of water to wash cloth diapers. And cloth diapers have to be disposed, too, as they don't last forever. that's water from the environment, and landfills.

I'm really uncomfortable with you bringing up environmental concerns and consumerism in a post about the poor, when the poor probably leave a carbon footprint 1/10 the size of the middle class or rich, if even. It comes across that the poor need to be monitored or concern trolled.

[amw]

I think you have completely misunderstood my feelings here. Please don't accuse me of "concern trolling". I may be prone to facetiousness and hyperbole, and I do drunk-post on this community a lot more often than I sober-post, but I am definitely not a sociopath

[darth_eldritch]

Okay, I see where you're coming from. It just seemed like you were saying that poor parents should be buying cloth diapers because of the environment and that poor buying the disposables was consumerism. Now I see you don't mean that.

You're right about this controlling what the poor buy. It seems a huge step to someone like myself, who could have used help with diapers as they were a major expense when my child was little. It is sad that something like this is celebrated in the light that it should be so much better.