![]() Working mothers, short on time as they were, needed to be able to take their kids with them when they ran errands. A half century after the new rooms appeared on Jones Beach, more mothers held jobs and the number of single parents and dual-income couples had risen. But it would take decades for these changing stations to become common features of public restrooms, and what eventually made the need for them more pressing was a number of shifts in family norms. Moses’s diaper-changing rooms-the first of their kind- became available on New York’s Jones Beach starting in 1929. A young and visionary civil servant, Moses imagined diaper-changing stations dotting New York’s parks, enabling mothers to enjoy more uninterrupted time outdoors. On a weekend stroll in 1914, the labor advocate and sociologist Frances Perkins told Moses that mothers have to trudge home from Central Park every time their baby’s diaper needs changing-their time in a splendid public space was being cut short. Before Moses-the man who would be immortalized in Robert Caro’s 1974 book The Power Broker-oversaw the creation of a network of highways, the United Nations building, and numerous public-housing complexes, he made mothers’ lives easier. It was this response that inspired an early and surprising champion of changing stations: the power-hungry, domineering New York urban planner Robert Moses. Well before parents came to expect publicly-available changing tables, many mothers simply limited their activities away from the home, in part to avoid uncomfortable diaper changes. The history of the device-as well as its future, as hinted at by that new law-is intertwined with the increasing number of dual-income households and the popularity of products designed with parents’ convenience in mind, as well as some of the most important recent changes in how Americans spend their days. Over the last 100 years, the availability of changing tables has tracked remarkably closely with trends in American parenting. The placement of changing tables may seem like a minor design decision, but their availability relates to shifts in the larger patterns of care and work. That is slowly changing: Last fall, President Obama signed a bill that will require all bathrooms in buildings controlled by the federal government to provide baby-changing stations, including in men’s rooms. In the decades since, changing tables have grown more common, but they still can be hard to find, especially for dads. Prior to the ’80s, when parents, and mothers in particular, went to shop or go out to eat, they usually had to fold themselves into the back of a car, balance their wriggling infant on a toilet seat, or crouch on a dirty bathroom floor to change their child’s diaper. It is perfect for commercial and home occasions, like bathrooms, restrooms in the shopping center, train, and other public places.The baby bottoms of Americans born before the 1980s likely never touched a diaper-changing station in a public restroom. ![]() You can gently fold-out or close the station.
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