The baby bottoms of Americans born before the 1980s likely never touched a diaper-changing station in a public restroom. Prior to the ‘80s, when parents, and mothers in particular, went to shop or go out to eat, they usually had to fold themselves into the back of a car, balance their wriggling infant on a toilet seat, or crouch on a dirty bathroom floor to change their child’s diaper.
In the decades since, changing tables have grown more common, but they still can be hard to find, especially for dads. That is slowly changing: Last fall, President Obama signed a bill that will require all bathrooms in buildings controlled by the federal government to provide baby-changing stations, including in men’s rooms.
The placement of changing tables may seem like a minor design decision, but their availability relates to shifts in the larger patterns of care and work. Over the last 100 years, the availability of changing tables has tracked remarkably closely with trends in American parenting. The history of the device—as well as its future, as hinted at by that new law—is intertwined with the increasing number of dual-income households and the popularity of products designed with parents’ convenience in mind, as well as some of the most important recent changes in how Americans spend their days.
[For more of this story, written by Rhaina Cohen, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...istory-koala/512306/]
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