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Barrier To Entry: How Diaper Need Isolates Parents

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Parenting a baby, despite its sublime moments of joy, can be challenging even for those with adequate resources. But for parents who are struggling to make ends meet, the difficulty is much greater. Stress gathers around meeting their baby’s most basic needs of being fed and, particularly, diapered.

Government assistance programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) aid families in feeding their kids.

But what about keeping babies healthy, clean and dry? What about diapers?

With no national assistance program to provide diapers to families, diaper need can endanger the health of the baby and make the job of parenting more stressful for the parent. Lack of diapers can also be an obstacle to the family accessing child care and even correlate with maternal depression according to new research from the National Diaper Bank Network.

The Network, a coalition of more than a 240 community-based sites distributing diapers to individuals and agencies located in 44 states and Washington D.C., is working to get diapers on baby-bottoms in need and to change the way we talk about, distribute and even tax diapers.

“We ask parents to do all sorts of things - talk to your baby, read to your baby – but that’s not what you’re thinking about if you’re concerned about feeding and diapering your baby,” said Joanne Goldblum, the executive director of the National Diaper Bank Network.

Keeping a baby in diapers can take a substantial chunk of a low-income family's income.  A month’s supply of diapers typically costs between $70 and $80, which is 6% of the gross income of a parent working full-time at minimum wage 

Head Start is the only subsidized child care in the country that provides diapers. It aims to eliminate the obstacles low-income families have to accessing quality care for their children by making sure there is no outlay of cash in using the service.

But other care centers, even if they are partially subsidized for the family based on income, still require the family to supply a child’s diapers. Policies that provide for parents to pay a percentage of income, but don’t account for the costs of diapers not provided by the program, effectively leave those families with an additional surcharge of as much as 6 percent.

A survey conducted by the Network in Connecticut child care centers showed that the overwhelming majority expect families to supply diapers. Some reported turning away parents whose children did not have diapers.

“Lots of low-income day care centers struggle with attendance and we surmise that diaper need is part of the reason why,” said Goldblum.

Goldblum said that in talking with Head Start centers in New Haven, Conn., where she is based, she hears about "Monday morning diaper rash," on the kids who didn’t have access to an adequate diaper supply during the weekend. That can harm babies, but the lack of diapers correlates strongly with problems for mom, too, including depression.

Not much research has been done on diaper need, said Alison Weir, director of policy, research and analysis at the Network, but she, together with Goldblum and colleagues at Yale, is working to correct that with a study that quantifies diaper need and explores its relationship to a mother’s mental health.

“We found that there was a strong correlation between diaper need and maternal depression,” said Weir.

The paper points out that more research is needed to pull apart how diaper need affects maternal mental health, but it is established that stressed and depressed parents negatively impact child development. The paper suggests that an adequate supply of diapers may be a tangible way of reducing parenting stress and increasing a sense of parenting competency.

Another way the National Diaper Bank Network is working to increase access to diapers for low-income families is to eliminate sales tax on diapers.

Seven states currently exempt diapers from sales tax: Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. (This is in addition to the five states that do not have any sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.) California, Illinois and Connecticut are considering reducing or eliminating their sales tax.

Certain states exempt adult diapers, but not baby diapers, from sales taxation: Connecticut, Maryland, and North Dakota.

“Accomplishing the big things comes from taking care of the small things,” Goldblum said.