Diaper Crisis: Poor Families Have No Money to Buy Diapers, study Says (873 hits)
Poor families have few resources to turn to for help in buying diapers, experts say. A study of one city finds nearly 30% don't have enough for their children. There have been days, since her son Ezekiel was born 11 months ago, that Los Angeles mom Beth Capper has gone without food to keep up her supply. One friend was arrested for stealing some. It's not drugs or alcohol or even baby formula that has put her in such a bind. It's diapers. "There's no way around buying them," said Capper, a 41-year-old single mother who doesn't work because of a disability.
Across the country, mothers like Capper are facing the same predicament. According to a report published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, diaper need — the inability to afford to keep a child in clean diapers — affects a "substantial" number of low-income Americans, with nearly 30% of mothers questioned in New Haven, Conn., reporting that they did not have enough for their children. It's a problem that often goes unnoticed.
"I call it the silent epidemic," said Caroline Kunitz, who runs Pacific Palisades-based L.A. Diaper Drive, which will distribute 1.5 million diapers to nonprofit partners around Southern California this year. In Los Angeles, nonprofits and social service agencies report that the need for diapers is "practically infinite" and that diapers "fly" out of warehouses as soon as they're delivered. When word spread — mistakenly — that Los Angeles-based Baby2Baby was handing out diapers directly to parents, desperate parents came to its office and formed a line that snaked around the corner in just a couple of hours, said co-chair Norah Weinstein. The nonprofit also received 3,000 voice-mail messages that day.
Parents in need can get subsidized healthcare through Medicaid, subsidized rent through a public housing agency and subsidized food through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. But there are few places to turn when they need help paying for diapers. Keeping a young child dry and clean can cost a pretty penny; the average is $18 a week. A single mother earning $15,080 a year in a minimum-wage job would need to devote more than 6% of her pay to diapers, according to the Pediatrics study. Add in the fact that many lower-income families can't afford to buy diapers in bulk at stores like Costco and Target and the expense becomes prohibitive. Cloth diapers are often not an option because they require frequent and expensive trips to the laundromat.
There are other ramifications for families. Nearly 8% of the women in the study reported that they stretched diapers when supplies ran short. Goldblum, a former social worker, said that she had often seen families resort to the practice: removing a dirty diaper, tossing out the solid waste and then returning the diaper to their baby's bottom. Wearing a diaper for too long can cause health problems, including skin rashes and urinary tract infections.Diaper need also affects families' economic well-being, Smith and Goldblum said. Most child-care providers require parents to supply diapers. When families can't, children miss days in day care and parents miss days at work or school.
Capper gets her diapers through Children's Institute Inc., a Los Angeles-based children's welfare organization that receives diapers from Baby2Baby and L.A. Diaper Drive. Because Ezekiel is enrolled in the institute's Early Head Start program, she gets free diapers. But many of the 25,000 children and families served by the organization receive diapers as a reward for attending parenting classes, said Megan Aubrey, the institute's director of development. Diapers have been the one incentive that keeps parents showing up for class, said Aubrey, who added that providing access to diapers "instills confidence" in struggling parents. "No one wants to have their child in a soiled diaper all day long," she said. "It's a basic thing, but it's really empowering." Until parents graduate out of the program, anyway. Then, for the most part, they're back on their own.
