Poverty in 2013: When Even Diapers Are a Luxury
http://www.thenation.com/article/176121/poverty-2013-when-even-diapers-are-luxury#axzz2f4Un4iit
Here’s a little window into poverty, American- style. According to a Yale University study published in August in Pediatrics magazine, almost 30 percent of low-income women with children in diapers can’t afford an adequate supply of them, with Hispanic women and grandmothers raising grandchildren the most likely to be in need. Some women are forced to make one or two nappies last the whole day, emptying them out and putting them back on the baby. Based on a survey of almost 900 low-income women in and around New Haven, Connecticut, investigators found the lack of diapers—such a simple thing—had profound and complex effects. The risks to children’s health are obvious: rashes, urinary tract infections, painful chafing. (If a mom is too poor to afford diapers, she probably can’t afford diaper cream or wipes or baby powder, either.) But to their surprise, the study authors also found that not being able to provide this necessary item (to say nothing of having a baby prone to fussing because of the discomfort of a constantly wet and dirty bottom) was a major cause of mental problems like stress, anxiety and depression in mothers. Maternal depression, we know, is associated with all kinds of problems in children, especially for poor kids, who need heroic parenting to overcome the many obstacles they face. Diapers are also necessary for kids entering daycare—no diapers, no enrollment. And no enrollment may mean a mother can’t take a job. For want of a diaper, a future could be lost. Two futures.
How could something so basic be in such short supply? Diapers are expensive—up to $100 a month—particularly for women who don’t have transportation and must rely on bodegas and local convenience stores. Some women reported spending 6 percent of their total income on paper nappies. And before you say, “Let them use cloth,” Marie Antoinette, bear in mind that diaper services are expensive, few poor women have their own washing machines, most laundromats don’t permit customers to launder dirty diapers and most daycare programs don’t allow cloth diapers. Like fresh fruit and vegetables, humanely raised meat and dairy products, and organic baby food, cloth diapers are the province of the well-off.
Despite this clear need, however, diapers are not covered by the food stamp program (SNAP) or by the Women, Infants, and Children feeding program. The government apparently finds them unnecessary, like other hygiene products (toilet paper, menstrual supplies, toothpaste, even soap), which are also, unlike food, subject to sales tax. Never mind that babies can’t choose not to pee and poo and did not select their parents. Never mind, too, that those grandmothers who are the hardest hit caregivers are performing a crucial social task—and saving the taxpayer millions—by keeping those kids out of foster care.
Food, it’s true, is even more basic than diapers. But some people believe low-income children don’t really need that either. If House Republicans have their way, 4 to 6 million SNAP recipients may soon find themselves bounced from the rolls. This, at a time when the Department of Agriculture tells us that 17.6 million households regularly go hungry, up from 12 million ten years ago. Proving yet again that there really is a difference between the parties, Republicans want to cut the food stamp budget by $40 billion over the next ten years. Let them drink tea! Seriously, are they out of their minds?
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When she was pregnant , and people would ask what they needed, they specifically asked for diapers (over fancy little cute outfits & toys).. Of course they ended up with a LOT of diapers, which they are about to use up, and then will switch to the cloth-diaper stash I set them up with.. I got them diapers from Vermont..made in the US.. not cheap, but they are unbleached, organic cotton.
Baby Bridgette has had ONLY breast milk and home-made veggies & cereals, and is consequently, a lean , healthy little girl (9months now)
They have friends with gardens & a wonderful farmers' market near them, and making the food & freezing it by portions (ice cube trays) is not as time-consuming as many would think.
Response to Gormy Cuss (Reply #12)
Response to The Magistrate (Reply #23)
it reads like they put the baby, with diaper on, in the tub of lye and boiling water, no wonder there were so many tragedies back then. 
peace.
Huge kettle with boiling water in it, kid fell over in it. Horrible way to die. 
My one fingered typing brevity leads to some strange sentences sometimes. 
It's especially difficult in the cities, where this article is set; no old barns or garages nearby that might have not been picked over by the antique hunters that might still have Grandma's (rather, great-Grandma's) old washing machine (that might still work after some application of elbow grease) sitting in the corner gathering dust and spider-webs.
And washing by hand/line drying takes time and air space that working parents/guardians might not have - especially if they're living in an apartment.
I grew up with cloth diapers and an old (even in the 1960's) electric wringer washer in the corner of the kitchen (in most of the places we lived - apartments and rental housing - until I was 14). For my brother, we had to have about 30 - 40 diapers on hand because between my parent's work schedules and the time we could get space at the apartment complex drying lines, we could only do laundry twice a week.
Until my brother was potty trained, the bathroom always stank, because even though those cloth diapers were "cleaned" in the toilet and rinsed out in the bathtub before they were dumped in the diaper pail, there was always the dirty baby stench. And wringer machines are not very safe...
When I was four, I ran my hand through the washing machine wringer trying to help Dad with the Wednesday-morning-before-he-went-on-shift laundry (mom was at work and would come home at noon). I nearly had my index finger tore off, broke about ten bones in my hand, and ended up with skin grafts and in a cast for a year.
Not saying your suggestion isn't helpful, but a lot depends on what is feasible at the situation that these poor families are in. Rural poor tend to have a lot more "do it the old fashioned way" resources than urban poor, simply through available space and laxer zoning and regulations. A working manual wringer washer, if one could be found outside an antique store, would be a terrific alternative to a laundromat for a family trying to make it in or outside a small town where the wash water can be dumped in the kitchen garden or rain-barrel watering system afterwards.
Cities are a trap for the urban poor; there's a very fine line of actions they can take without having police, social services, or nosy neighbors who will call the police or social services on their backs, and their resources are limited by the fact their "footprint" or available space to move and act is much smaller and most of what they survive off needs to be purchased. There is little ability to legally scavenge or find lifestyle alternatives for the urban poor - there are always regulations in place to ensure whatever they do to survive won't be exposed to the public.
Hence the dilemma of disposable diapers - daycare that is subsidized for the poor won't take children in cloth diapers because it's harder for the staff to change a baby and dispose of the waste - it's both a manpower issue and a sanitation issue for them. Not even the local church on on-base military daycares will take children who use cloth diapers. There are five daycares (other than the two Montessori schools) that advertise they take children in cloth diapers around here; and the median price for those daycares is usually between $400 (for 20 hours a month) to $3200 (full time or 160 hours a month) a month.
This limits the ability for a working poor parent to make a living; yet the working parent gets punished (loses assistance because "s/he won't work"
for staying at home and taking care of the child until it is potty trained because most daycares won't accept a baby with cloth diapers.
The alternative most working poor have is usually to purchase and set aside enough disposable diapers to get the baby to and from the daycare, and try to figure out what to do the rest of the time. That's how my stepdaughter handles it, if she runs through the month's worth of diapers that we grandparents alternate in getting for the baby.
Most working poor parents don't have that much support.
Haele
Mom was the youngest and doesn't remember the diapers, and her mom died by the time I was born, so there were no stories about doing the diapers in Depression era LA. I suspect there was a large tin tub, lots of boiling water, bleach, lye and a household mangle contraption that also had a meat-grinder and a couple other geared household tools on it involved, because that was how she and her mom did laundry until she was in high school. Aunt Lyn got the household mangle and meat-grinder contraption and sold it to an antique dealer for some good money after Grandpa passed.
I do remember Dad's mom talking about diaper services, but most of my little brother's diapers were fabric store remmenants or cut up flannel "binkies" and dressing robes from Goodwill (he was the only kid with Stewart Tartan diapers in student housing at UC Berkley!), which was all we could afford. Cloth Diaper packs were too expensive on a starving student budget, even at Woolworths.
Haele
At some point my late father put his foot down and said enough of this and managed to get her a for real washing machine.
She was using the wringer until the 1960s at least. By this time she was in her late 70s and had no teeth, no nothing.
Sad as hell the way women of the Victorian era were treated IMO, a cruel and sad life she had and she never said a word about it either.
RIP GRANDMA -- 1891-1976
but lots of working single moms don't have the time. So they eat fast food. And half of DU slams them for being spendthrift and unhealthy. 
there's a faction of people here who are especially nasty when it comes to poverty. They would take great pleasure flaming me in the public square for being one of those 'career welfare queens' or some other such nonsense. That, and the fact I have been justifying my economic position my entire adult life, old habits die hard....
thanks for the comment though 
...though certain types of actions (that make the rulers rich).....cause these same poor to need food stamps ...then punish them for being poor.
"I'm going to make you poor so I can laugh and hurt you" 
I just got up when I posted that and I couldn't think of what I wanted to say.
You've pretty much nailed it however.
It seems sad to me that a person cannot buy a ready-to-eat sandwich with food stamps esp. if said person may not have a place to prepare food and perhaps not even a place to live which is sometimes the case whether anyone cares to admit it or not! 
