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A Father’s Photo Reignites the Conversation About Diaper Changing Stations

When it comes to changing diapers, Donte Palmer has his technique down.

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By
Melissa Gomez
, New York Times

When it comes to changing diapers, Donte Palmer has his technique down.

After all, when public restrooms do not offer a place to change his son’s diaper, Palmer has to get creative: He squats low, against a wall, and lays Liam across his lap. His 12-year-old son, Isaiah Wells-Thomas, gives him a hand, disposing of wipes and soiled diapers.

Last month, when Palmer was going through the motions of squatting in a bathroom stall at a restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, Isaiah took out his phone and snapped a photo.

Palmer, a high school teacher in Jacksonville, decided to post it online to show how routine the maneuver had become for his son, thinking he would get some reaction from friends. But a popular Instagram account reposted his photo, and soon, local and national media outlets picked up his story.

Messages of support from around the world — from fathers as far away as Australia, Japan and Uganda — flooded in.

“Eighty percent of the conversation was, we need father equality,” Palmer, 31, said in a phone interview Thursday.

Palmer’s post and movement, #squatforchange, reignited the conversation about how changing stations are more commonly found in women’s restrooms than in men’s. On his posts, women also shared their stories of having to find ways to change their children without changing stations.

“The argument is we need more of them” for all parents, said Palmer, who lives in St. Augustine.

But more often, he added, he is left to squat in a bathroom stall.

Palmer knows that changing stations in men’s restrooms exist. On a recent experiment with a friend, he said, he visited eight restaurants or stores in Jacksonville, and found that two of them had changing stations in their men’s restrooms.

In 2016, President Barack Obama signed the Bathrooms Accessible in Every Situation Act, known as the Babies Act, which required federal public buildings to be equipped with baby changing facilities. Last year, the New York City Council approved legislation that now requires new buildings and renovated ones to have changing tables available to the public, regardless of gender.

Councilman Rafael L. Espinal Jr., who proposed the legislation, said he got the idea after seeing a father change his child’s diaper on a sink a few years ago.

“I found it disturbing,” Espinal said Thursday.

When he proposed it, he said, he received no pushback and instead heard more stories from mothers who had been forced to change their children on floors because of a lack of changing stations. The legislation includes any business that has a public restroom, including small coffee shops, restaurants and even nightclubs, he added.

The legislation also addresses gender equality, he said, because it means men will have equal access to changing stations.

“The only way we’re going to create more gender parity is by making sure fathers are on diaper duty as well, and can be,” he said.

In Baltimore, the City Council is considering a bill that would require changing tables in men’s and women’s restrooms, after a councilman posted on social media about struggling to find a sanitary place in a public restroom to change his daughter’s diaper, according to The Baltimore Sun. The Sun reported that all 15 members of the council had signed on as co-sponsors to the bill.

Palmer, who described himself as an active father, said he wanted to have an even playing field for men and women.

“I want to do all duties,” he said.

Palmer said he had recently started speaking with representatives about introducing local legislation to require adding changing stations in public restrooms, similar to the legislation in New York City.

“It just needs to be accessible everywhere for parents,” he said.

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