It all started in the 1990s but no body really picked up on it. Most public schools in the United States have strict rules stating that children must be potty trained before entering school. But more and more parents were sending their children to kindergarten before they mastered their potty skills. Teachers dealt with the occasional accidents.
By 2010 however with both mothers and fathers working and the world becoming increasingly automated, parents spent less time giving their children the appropriate potty training skills. Instead of the occasional accidents, kindergarten teachers began noticing more children coming to school in training pants. They were dealing with constant dribblers now. School boards were informed, but sided with parents, relaxing the rules on potty training for kindergartners.
After a few years, more and more kindergartners started arriving at school in full fledged diapers. Diaper manufacturers responded with larger sizes, better protection and odor guards. Commercials on television showed kindergartners in school, a teacher praising a child for wearing the proper protection. “I love my children and that’s why it’s important to send them to school with the best protection,” she says. Pointing to a child in a slightly crouched position, the teacher smiles and says, “Keeping them comfortable all day is important for their social development.”
Soon first graders began to enter the school year with a constant dribble. Again the training pants manufacturers responded. Teachers saw thick panties hugging the bottoms of their students. Some quit. It just wasn’t right they said. But school boards continued to relent to parents’ insistence that their children would eventually master their potty skills.
Then it happened. First graders began coming to class in diapers. Diaper manufacturers were excited. This was a big money making opportunity. News organizations pounced, but what they found was that most child psychologists recommended children mastering potty skills on their own. A famous daytime talk show television star began a month long campaign about child development. Parents saw study after study showing that potty training was harmful to young children. It just produced too much stress they said.
Soon first graders moved from the occasional pee accident to full fledged diaper defecations. School nurses began training programs to show teachers how to properly respond to accident prone children. Don’t make a scene, they said. They’ll grow out of it. Diaper manufacturers made the diapers so well fitted and comfortable that the young students could comfortably deal with a messy diaper throughout the day and even learn to change themselves when they got home from school.
The trend continued. Soon second and even a few third graders trickled into class with the dribbles. Children’s diapers were coming close to some of the smaller adult diaper sizes. Then the first third graders came to class in diapers. Socially, children saw diapers as a necessity, sort of like putting on a pair of socks. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders started dribbling. They came to class in training pants. After a few years, some started having day time bowel movements in class, alarming teachers. The older students progressed to pull-ups. Diaper manufacturers pounced. It was time to put older students into diapers, they said. Hiring some of the best marketers, ad campaigns focused on how cool diapers were. Diapers in colors like hot pink came to market. And ads focused on young television child actors feeling cool in their diapers.
Parents were encouraged to keep their children in diapers. “Your child will learn at their appropriate time,” the ads said. Some ads got even bolder, showing a famous child actor entering a school rest room for a “change.” The camera zoomed in on the bottom of a bathroom stall. The sound of diaper tapes could be heard and then a clearly full diaper fell to the floor. It was the color that was most interesting. This wasn’t a young teenager with bladder control issues. Nope, this teen was quite comfortable pushing out a fresh load in his pants. Clearly a brown hue could be seen through the diaper’s plastic cover.
High schools started a program to give out a potty training certificate to students who mastered potty training by the tenth grade. Parents rebelled. The certificate program was pushed to the 11th grade and then the 12th grade. And then graduation.
With a worldwide shortage of clean, drinkable water, environmental groups came on board. They touted the benefits of cloth diapers. A few years later government research produced ways to recycle disposable diapers to create clean energy. This finally did it.
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The year is 2013 and Lee Cross has just entered the third grade in a new school. He is one of the few who still wears a diaper but it's okay in his mind because most of the other kids are still in trainers. Still, being the new kid in school is always a bit intimidating and going to school is one thing all normal kids hate. The vacuums don't watch where they're going, the drinking fountains are never safe to use for one reason or another, the diaper pails in the restrooms are never emptied often enough (probably to give students an incentive not to loiter at a changing station), and being the new kid in school would mean that our intrepid hero wouldn't know anyone.
Let's join him now as he boards the bus that will take him to school.