Are cloth nappies a feminist issue?

[Habbibu]

This is inspired by a post by BoffinMum (hope you don't mind, BM) on another thread, saying she hated cloth nappies for what they represented about the oppression of women, and this struck me as interesting as it's never occurred to me. We used disposables with dd and cloth with ds - I've personally found cloth less hassle, as dh and I both just slong them in the wash when the bucket's full etc, and the bin doesn't smell as much.

So is there more to nappies as an issue than, say, other non-disposable clothes? Is it because in other households it would be seen as women's work - is this different from other laundry issues?

As I type I realise it looks like I'm taking the piss and I'm not - I was genuinely curious about the comment, but really didn't want to join that particular thread.

Explain about the top-loading bit, SGM? I don't understand...

I would just like to say that DH washes all our nappies, in fact he does all the washing. I've not used our washing machine once, or the iron. So it was certainly less work for me

They're only a feminist issue in households with an uneven division of labour (in which case the issue is the division of labour, not the nappy bucket).

I left the decision about nappies up to DH, because he does more of the child care and all of the laundry (he is SAHD, I work full time). He went for disposables. I'm not really too worried about our carbon footprint: we don't fly, we don't have a car, I cycle to work, we walk everywhere with DS in the pushchair, we don't have a load of whizzy electrical gadgets.

I'm not sure I buy this "women are more in tune with the environment" business. I'm not. I'm fundamentally an urbanite with a deep distrust of "nature", what with it being cold and wet and muddy. My concern for the environment is purely intellectual.

I agree with everybody who says unequal division of labour is a feminist issue, not nappies...having said that I am a SAHM and would feel far more oppressed by having to run to the shops with only one nappy left in the house (because that is my style) than I do by slinging a load in the machine :)

I think I remember reading a thread/article in which cloth nappies were mentioned in the wider context of, something like, 'Is the green movement trying to put women back in the home'.

I think the argument went something along the lines of: An environmentaly conscious way of living requries more time and effort (e.g. composting, cloth nappies). As women have to spend more time doing this sort of thing they are being forced back into the home. But this argument rested on the assumption that it would be women who did the crappy domestic chores. So, as long as the chores are shared I don't see that it matters really. But perhaps the article was picking up on what Sping Chicken said about the green movment: that it does often come across as: "Women! Stop whining and do more unpaid shitwork, the planet is more important than you."

hmmmmm - have just thought though. If we really all did live properly sustainable lifestyles that would proably mean that it would be very very difficult (without paid help) for a couple with children to hold down two jobs. And perhaps it would be far more difficult to arrange it so we could all work less than it would be to drift back into that comfortable old male breadwinner ideal (which hasn't really gone away anyhow)...[hazy, half formed, mushy thought]

I seem to recall that a book on this kind of issue was recently published in France (can't find what it's called though and would love to know if anyone could help). The basic premise was that by returning to breastfeeding/cloth nappies/SAHMs, women were taking a step back feminism wise and that disposable nappies/formula/childcare were all tools that enabled women to work and therefore be equal to men.

Or something along those lines, this was just the general gist. I'm not saying I agree, but I do think it raises some interesting points. Obviously it assumes that women are the ones feeding. nappy changing and are soley responsible for childcare...

Ahhh - EMM, that rings some bells. Now I think about it, it wasn't an article - it was a section on Women's Hour. It must have been a review of that book .

I agree absolutely with those who say that this is not a feminist issue, but the unfair division of domestic work is.

We had 3 children in 4 years, all in cloth nappies. I rarely changed a nappy, that was DP's job, I had it down to one nappy change a week at my "peak" - the one full day I spent at home with dd on my own. And I never washed them, that was his job.

Meanwhile I did the breastfeeding (the one thing you really can't delegate to a man), and I washed the dds' clothes.

We found this perfectly equitable.

I think it's really important to organise an equitable division of domestic labour and childcare from the start of having babies, before habits get ingrained. It's much harder to shift the balance later on.

Yes, as many have said, it is all about the uneven division of labour. We used cloth (well, all in one things that were virtually as easy as disposables.) BUT - both DH and I changed nappies and did the washing. I was off on ML for 6 months so probably did more changing of nappies overall, but when he wasn't at work he changed far more than me - and did plenty of washing.

They don't necessary lead to hours of back breaking labour. We used biodegradable liners and these went straight down the loo. We then put ours straight into a bucket of water and vinegar with a lid to soak, and when this was full they went into the washing machine. Line dried, or over the radiator - voila. No smell, nothing. In fact the worst nappy smells I ever encountered were in friends houses who had those 'nappy wrapper' machines that seemed to stick to high heaven.

We only stopped because nursery would not take her without disposables, whcih is something I think OFSTED should address - its hardly a green policy... .

EMM, it's by Elisabeth Badinter, and it's called "Conflit, La Femme et La Mere" (can't do accents on this computer, sorry). She argues that the pressure to be a "perfect" mother (breastfeed, use cloth nappies, co-sleep etc) is anti-feminist because it pushes women back into the home.

Yes, notyummy, I wonder if there's a difference between modern cloth nappies and older ones, or also the way in which they're "managed" - for us they're easier than disposables, and the work involved less than going to the shop to buy nappies all the time - which surely, in a household with uneven division of labour, would also be women's work?

I also don't see how many of these things necessarily push women back into the home. Apart from breastfeeding, none of it is stuff that men can't do, and so the choices that you make, whether driven by environmental issues, laziness, disorganisation or a desire to see your baby with a purple fluffy bottom should be largely immaterial if the balance of duties is evenly managed. It strikes me as a bit of a red herring - you have to use disposables because men won't wash cloth - is that not missing the point?

Personally I've found that the kind of men who actually care about the environment will also be the kind who won't fly, ride their bike to work but also the kind who have an equal division of the shitty labour at home too.

I agree that the pressure to be a perfect mother, the things Badinter talks about, can encourage women to get too bound up in domestic chores.

Meanwhile those of us who don't feel the pressure to be a perfect mother quite as keenly can skip merrily away from the mop and laundry basket (perhaps too easily in my case, my dds tend to have a rather ungroomed look, and I worry a bit that they copy me in that. We are not a chic family).

But as feminists, we need to start from an assumption that all parenting should be shared, regardless of gender. and from that basis, adding more parental tasks is not necessarily unfeminist, it only becomes so if the women and not the men take the parenting tasks on board.

yy, Fennel, that was my point; in fact criticising parental tasks themselves for being unfeminist is surely a bit, well, unfeminist?

We use cloth for the cost aspect.

I do the washing (sexist or not, dh CANNOT get the colour cycles right). However he puts them away and changes our ds more than I do.

He was far more "pro cloth" than I was. I've never looked at it as a feminist issue, unless perhaps the assumption was that the woman would be at home all day washing them by hand.

I find it quite useful myself to be incapable of getting the colour cycles right. DP accuses me of bunging red things in with other colours, and I do. It makes him keener to do his own washing .