One in three U.S. families cannot afford an adequate supply of diapers for their babies. It’s National Diaper Need Awareness Week right now (September 21–27, 2020), and you just learned (if you didn’t know already) that diaper need is a widespread problem. The National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN) works to increase awareness—in hopes, of course, that this leads to action. We’ve helped individuals, sports teams, schools, faith communities, and businesses come together to get diapers to the families who need them most. But we have struggled to get much action out of government.
That’s a problem. Based on census data, we estimate that 5 million children in the U.S. are at risk of diaper need. Imagine if the COVID-19 response or building roads were left up to nonprofits to address. That’s the kind of scale we are talking about here. NDBN reaches about 4% of the children experiencing diaper need. That’s despite a 500% increase in the number of diaper banks in less than a decade, and our member organizations distributing hundreds of millions of diapers, including more than 270 million donated by our founding sponsor Huggies since 2011.
We cannot solve a problem as vast as diaper need without significant participation from the largest organization in the U.S.: the government.
Mayors, governors and even members of Congress will mark National Diaper Need Awareness Week, and congratulate their local diaper banks for doing amazing work. While their words will be sincere, you cannot keep a baby clean, dry and healthy with a photo op or tweet alone. Government funding for diapers is nearly nonexistent. A bipartisan congressional coalition has been pushing for $200 million in diaper aid as part of the pandemic response. Of the $2 trillion the federal government has allotted to coronavirus relief, the diaper funding has been zero, even as requests for help have increased 100% to 500% and more at diaper banks around the country this year.
On the state level, California helps low-income families with diapers. That happened in large part because Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez took on diaper need as a mission, and fought hard for funding over the course of years. Connecticut allocates dollars to support the Diaper Bank of Connecticut. Plus, Illinois recently provided one-time emergency COVID-19 funding to support diaper distributions in the state. We also have passionate champions in other states, as well as in Congress, where Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Barbara Lee introduced the End Diaper Need Act. Alas, their colleagues have failed to pass it. Thus far only California, Connecticut, and Illinois have provided public funding for diapers.
The work of diaper banks has demonstrated the tremendous benefit of providing diapers. When babies receive diapers from a diaper bank, they have fewer sick visits to the pediatrician, their parents earn more because they miss fewer work days, and state sales tax revenue rises. In 2013, NDBN partnered with Yale University to demonstrate a strong link between diaper need and maternal depression. A Georgetown study found that one year’s (2017) cases of postpartum depression cost the U.S. $14.2 billion over five years of the mother and child’s life. Certainly, meeting diaper need will not eradicate depression in new mothers, but it is an easy action that will help some. A great deal of human suffering and financial cost could be saved by simply making sure every baby has the diapers needed to thrive.
Imagine that there were no public schools. Then as now, families who could afford it would send their children to private schools. Other families might give up a second car, or even a third meal each day, to pay tuition. Civic-minded folks would raise money to open free schools, but these institutions would never have room for all the children who needed them. A great many children would simply do without. But we do have public schools, because we recognize that every child needs and deserves an education and that giving young people a good start benefits our whole society. The rationale is no different around diapers. We can choose to be better.
I know that people all over the country are marking National Diaper Need Awareness Week by running diaper drives, hosting fundraisers, and other great actions. I am going to push my luck and make one more request. To every wonderful person who bought a pack of diapers for your local diaper bank or recently donated money to help get diapers to families impacted by fires, storms or unemployment: Please call your state or federal legislators and let them know that you care about diaper need.
I’ve been in diaper banking on one form or another for going on 17 years. It is clear to me that people get it. Once they learn that babies spend days in wet, dirty diapers, they spring into action and do everything they can to help. It’s time to demand that our government do likewise. We can #EndDiaperNeed.