The Diaper Divide

Every single one of the dads my age that I know are involved at least occasionally in changing their kids' diapers. Some of the families have very predictable divisions of labor as far as diaper duty goes, others (like ours) base it more on who's less occupied at the present moment -- with a bent towards my changing them when I can since I'm gone for much of the day and Mel is stuck with the job.

But a few months ago we started realizing that most dads of our parents' generation were never involved in diaper changes -- and as I've started asking the question to more and more people, the tide change has become clear:

• Baby boomer dads -- even the very best of them -- did not. do. diapers.


• Gen X / Y / Millenial dads -- all but the very worst of them -- assume diaper duty to be a normal part of fathering.

There are exceptions to these rules, but from what I've seen so far they are few and very far between. There has been a monumental shift in the way men look at the job of diapering (read: their job versus their wife's job) that seems to span economic backgrounds, national regions, parenting styles, everything but age.

I'm quite curious how this shift took place with very little modeling and very little controversy -- it seems to have just happened. Any thoughts? If nothing else, give me the poll feedback below so I can see if it's as widespread as I think.




Update: I found a better poll supplier (micropoll.com) whose polls display better(edit: ok, they were displaying better the first couple of times I loaded the page. Don't know why they have those gaps in them now). The votes that had already been received have been entered in already -- no need to vote again.