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Today in performative motherhood! The Handwashing and Flats Challenge, in which internet moms use, hand wash, and blog about old fashioned flat diapers for a week to raise awareness about diaper need. A thread:
So back in 2011 the cloth diapering enthusiast behind the Dirty Diaper Laundry website learned that 1/3 American families struggle to afford diapers every month.
She also found that WIC and similar programs don’t provide diapers. WIC and SNAP are run by the USDA and are strictly food only programs so that farmers can benefit as well as needy families.
There are diaper banks around, but of course if you’re in a rural, poor area they’re less available and less consistent. Maybe they have diapers in your baby’s size this month, maybe not. This is a problem.
Lots of conservative and crunchy types hear this and ask why poor families don’t just use cloth diapers. You can always count on The Federalist to panic about the government force and bootstraps http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/11/5-ways-to-solve-the-diaper-gap-without-force/
The basic response to the cloth diaper thing (aside from the time and assache involved which no one mentions bc I guess poor ppl are just supposed to suffer 
), is that daycares and laundromats don’t generally allow cloth diapers.
), is that daycares and laundromats don’t generally allow cloth diapers.
And depending on where you live, the utility costs involved in washing and drying would be about as much as buying discount disposables.
But this did not deter cloth diaper purveyors! Nope! They wondered if poor families couldn’t just HAND WASH THEIR SHITTY DIAPERS IN THE BATHTUB to solve diaper need! Wheee! 
So they created an annual blog event where women volunteered to hand wash diapers for a week to see if it was really doable.
Many women participated in a blog linkup and, later, a hashtag. Linkup topics included motives for participation, “diaper stash”, wash routine, and conclusions.
The linked blogs were mostly written by straight, married, white women in rural or suburban houses, with a preponderance of homeschoolers and preppers with off grid aspirations.
Some leaned right socially, a few leaned left, all were heavily libertarian and into self sufficiency.
Most said that they did the challenge to see if they could, to raise awareness, to build a sense of community with other participants, for camping or emergency prep.
Nobody interviewed women who were struggling to afford disposables and didn’t want to do cloth. Nobody suggested calling congress. A few women concluded that it WAS possible to hand wash diapers and poor women should do that instead of relying on the government...
The challenge appeared to be more about participants than actual ordinary needy populations, but that’s no surprise.
One motivation that was never explicitly mentioned? MARKETING.
Lots of challenge participants had monetized blogs. A linkup means more traffic and more as revenue but no one says that. Nope. It’s all about *sharing* just like all the other MLMs
And the blog hosting the linkup basically functions as an up line. Every time you want to see one of the smaller blogs, you click through a linkup hosted by the mother blog, if you will. And if you’re visiting the small blogs, you’re probably visiting the big one.
So your struggling and think, “hey maybe I should hand wash some diapers... WAIT, maybe I should *monetize* the act of hand washing by blogging about it!”
But, as with MLMs, market saturation rears its ugly head pretty quickly, so latecomers realistically aren’t going to make much money if any...
It’s a bit better than MLMs insofar as the big bloggers aren’t charging little bloggers to use the internet or whatever, but a lot of them do sell bundles of blogging tips, so... ugh.
So there are a few things I find really fascinating about this challenge. 1) hand washing feels historical, but it isn’t really. Ppl have been avoiding diaper laundry as long as babies have been pooping. 2) it’s intensely individualistic bc noone has faith in public institutions
So talking about America and Europe, those big cotton diapers we think of weren’t really common until the late 19th century. People used bonding cloths, rags, sometimes miss or hay if they were short on cloth.
For a long time people just hung up the urine soaked cloths to dry and used them again.
And people also bowel trained babies from a very early age (2-3 months). This wasn’t like modern elimination communication where you watch your baby’s face all day to sense when they’re about to shit on you.
This was holding a baby over a pot at regular times and inserting a soap stick in the rectum to stimulate defecation. People did not want to hand wash poopy diapers, esp when water and fuel were precious commodities.
Before household textiles became more common, many mobile babies just eliminated on the dirt, stone or wooden floor or benches and caregivers threw ashes on the mess and swept it away
Cloth diapers became more popular as cloth rugs and furniture became mire widely available and babies started peeing on them. 
My MIL’s grandmother was a poor Kentucky sharecropper in the 20’s and she had all of her babies go naked and let the dogs clean up the mess. Gross but true. They didn’t have money for a big stash of diapers or time to wash them.
As cloth diapers got more popular toward the turn of the 20th century, women did hand wash, but laundry was THE FIRST THING people hired out when they had any money for it.
And lots of working poor families in upstairs apartments without running water just did lived with dirty clothes bc they didn’t have the time or resources to do all the hand laundry to keep modern cleanliness standards.
So yeah, there was never a time when mothers hand washed all those 30 diapers and LIKED it goddammit bc if their nurturing power as women or whatever essentialist nonsense is running this show.
Honestly, I’m not even going to get into all the privilege involved in thinking it’s easy for struggling families to just hand wash diapers bc it should be obvious to anyone with a shred of experience or empathy...
But I do find it striking that, when confronted with diaper need, the first response isn’t to organize or advocate for paid mat leave, diaper assurance or higher wages. It’s to turn inward and isolate more.
But that’s the whole world of natural mothering really. It’s women taking formerly public responsibilities onto themselves and leaving the moms who can’t do that behind.
You have to get yourself lay-midwife level prepared for your “natural birth”. Maybe if you prepared better those mean doctors wouldn’t have given you a C-section.
You can’t trust schools, so you have to be your own educational expert and socialization coordinator as you homeschool.
You can’t trust those big-pharma compromise docs, so you have to learn all about elderberries and essential oils to save your kid from vaccines.
You can’t trust the food industry, so you have to hand grind heritage spelt you bought from a trusted (?) blogger. It’s okay. It can be part of homeschooling.
It’s all on mom all the time, right down to handwashing diapers in the bathtub, so your baby can have the best, whatever that means.
And if you can’t do all that....? Maybe you should just do your research and learn more skills from YouTube to be more empowered all alone out there. You know better you do better after all.
So yeah, if you actually want to help, maybe go on and work on politicians for better paid leave, diaper assistance and higher wages. Tell your friends to call too. Don’t go into your libertarian isolation cave!!! Reach out!
You can also donate to the national diaper bank network in the meantime 
https://nationaldiaperbanknetwork.org
https://nationaldiaperbanknetwork.org
