Taking 3 year old daughter into Men’s Toilets

Surely pads are designed to catch unavoidable leaks and are not a substitute for a toilet?

Unless they're very vulnerable indeed, most adults with continence issues don't consider pads to be the equivalent of a baby's nappy and just freely and contentedly do their business in them whenever they need to go.

Disabled people already face huge challenges in everyday life - they don't need people to find 'solutions' for them instead of using the toilet as normal, so as to get them out of their toilets to free them up for any non-disabled person who fancies using them.

If everybody can just go around wearing pads and using them as a nappy, we might as well not bother having any public toilets at all.

An overflowing colostomy bag or a leaking stoma is slightly more inconvenient than a bit of bladder leakage.

Disabled toilets are also raised with handrails and alarms. It isn't just about needing to pee.

Doesn't matter, he can still use it

Eh? What on earth has that got to do with a little child being taken to the toilet with their parent?

Why on earth would anyone leave their vulnerable 3 year old with a complete stranger? Especially just because they were female and the child was with their dad. There are enough useless fathers without bashing one that actually looks after his child and telling him he should have found a strange woman.

A man not wanting to use the toilet with a toddler in there can wait 30 seconds or leave just like women have to do because adult men invade women's toilets en masse.

I think it's very sad that so many people see a toilet clearly labelled 'disabled' and automatically view it as a more convenient free-for-all facility for anybody who fancies it.

Maybe they resent the 'privilege' of a disabled person - who frequently will have the 'choice' of either using that toilet or wetting/soiling themselves in public - and want in on it too.

contrary to popular belief it would seem you can't actually see anything when men are using urinals.

That's not true.

Pardon my ignorance, but don't/can't disabled people who may need quick access to a toilet do what the rest of us with incontinence problems do - wear pads?

Huge numbers of women in particular, but also men, wear pads.

I wouldn’t take a little girl in somewhere with a urinal, I’d have used a disabled toilet if at all possible

Yes, because people with disabilities - including my mum - not only need adaptations but they also need quick access to facilities. Facilities in the UK are bad enough as it is without them being taken up by people who think they are just more convienient toilets.

Gent's toilets have cubicles, and contrary to popular belief it would seem you can't actually see anything when men are using urinals.

A lot of people here big fans of drag queen story hour I suspect

It rather depends if it means the disabled facilities are being hogged by able bodied people to the disabled communities detriment. So my personal answer would be, if it means queuing for so long my child can’t attend a venue then please use the toilets designed for you.
Children have ALWAYS gone into to the toilet in line with their carers sex. Small boys in the Ladies and small girls in the Gents is expected.

Lots of things don't cause direct harm, but we don't do them, or wouldn't do them.

This is just silly. We have single sex toilets to protect people's dignity and safety from the ill intentions of the opposite sex. Neither of these apply with a little child aged 3 who is in there with a parent.

He wouldn't have had his penis out in front of a young girl - anybody, in fact - as urinals are specifically designed so that people can only see the user's back. You may as well express the same worry about women in cubicles having their privates out in front of young boys who are being taken in with their mums, because there's 'only' a closed cubicle door between them.

Are there really disabled people who would object to a man in this situation using the disabled toilet?

I don't understand why some people think that disabled toilets should stand unused for 23½ hours a day if there is someone who would value the space and privacy that they provide, or if the others are all full and the disabled is empty.

The OP should have used the disabled, there are many men who would be uncomfortable to the point of not being able to do the deed by the presence of a female child at a urinal.

The guy was a jerk for the way he reacted, though.

Is that man not entitled to a safe single sex toilet as women demand? I think many men would feel extremely awkward with a child standing there. Men are bombarded now with how they must behave in front of the opposite sex and it probably shocked him that someone would do this. Maybe he didn't want to be put into the situation where he had his penis out in front of a young female? It's just not a normal thing to do - use a family or disabled toilet.

I didn't see in the post that either he or his DD were disabled.

I think most parents would much prefer to watch their own children themselves rather than find a random stranger and trust them to do it.

Yes I can see you were responding to an example of when using a disabled toilet if you were a different sex to the person you support was not an option by saying in your husbands situation it was easy. My response was to explain that his situation was not universal and there were many pairs who didn’t have that option. The vast majority of carers are female and at least half of the people they support are male and need care long past childhood. Personally I think the days of women quietly putting up with inadequate facilities should be long gone and that female carers needs are not being met.

If you had asked a female with children please could they watch your DD whilst you used the toilet I'm sure most would agree. I've stood next to a toddler outside a toilet before so her Dad could use the loo. As your DD is getting older you could have used the cubicle.

How exactly is this going to harm a three year old?

I would not want my daughter going inside the men’s toilets full stop, cubicle or not. As someone entitled to use the disabled toilets I wouldn’t mind at all if a Dad in this situation used them. In fact this has prompted me to have this conversation with my DH about doing so should this situation arise when he’s out alone with our DD.

I would prefer that to a dirty toilet with rude men and knobs swinging round.

They're standing facing a wall and discreetly having a wee - with only their backs visible - before doing up their flies, then stepping away from the urinal and (we very much hope) walking to the sinks to wash their hands before leaving.

Do you really think that men prance around and pirouette in public toilets as they wee - doing big willy windmills - as though they're performing with the Royal Ballet?!