Post contains affiliate links. If you click & buy, I may receive a small commission, thank you. This post was originally published on the Kelly Wels blog. I’ve often heard the term “daddy friendly” in reference to cloth diapers, and it always makes me chuckle a little bit because of my own husband. However, I realize that it could maybe seem insulting to men, or might imply that other diapers are “hard.”
My husband has a few favorites (pre-stuffed pockets, with velcro closures) and he tends to get confused by side snapping diapers or things with a lot of flaps or folding. Fortunately for me, it didn’t take much to get him “on board” with cloth diapers, and he gives it his best shot even if the diaper seems confusing. He’s put diapers on backwards, but hey, front snapping, front to back side snapping, back to front side snapping…I don’t blame him! (He will go “fishing” for his favorites and toss rejects back in the basket, hee hee.) However, I know he would learn to origami fold a flat before we went back to disposables and the rash that came with them. In fact, I reminded him that he HAS used flats during the flats challenge – I had pad folded flats laid in covers and yes, he managed to put one on our child. 😉
I’ve heard of some spouses needing to be persuaded to use cloth, (calculators come in handy for demonstrating the savings), and my husband made me laugh when he relayed a conversation he heard at our local cloth diaper store.
A woman was saying that now she just needed to convince her husband to switch to cloth diapers. My husband says (to me) “well that’s just stupid, how do you need to convince him? They’re no different than disposables!”
He pauses then says: “We don’t have any more of those origami ones do we?”
Me: “…”
Him: “You know, those ones where you pick ’em up and $h*t all falls out.” (Hand motions of crazy stuff falling out of the sky.)
Me: (giggle) “No, I donated those.”
He was referring to the diapers with flaps and/or snap-in/lay-in inserts. When I got a Bumgenius Freetime he said “the diaper is a lie!” because it looked like a Bumgenius 4.0 pocket, but when he picked it up he had to figure out how to try to fold the flaps.
Bottom line, “Daddy Friendly” doesn’t mean we think that men are stupid, but if you get started with something that is just as easy as disposables (that is, a “daddy friendly diaper”) he will be much more likely to embrace other types and before you know it, he’ll be able to tell a fitted from an all-in-one and maybe even get involved in the diaper laundry!
If you have a male spouse/significant other, does he have a favorite diaper? Was he on board with cloth right away?
Maria wants to live in a world where cloth diapers are the norm and moms can make parenting choices without judgement. When she’s not chasing her 18, 14 and 11-year old kids around, you might find her checking out the latest gadgets, organizing something (again) or exercising in the fresh air. 
I’ve also heard of them as caregiver friendly. Maybe we should just all call them newbie friendly lol. When I first started I had an equal stash of bumgenius pockets with snaps and pockets with Velcro. No one in my house would touch the snaps until we had ran out of Velcro. And many a snap diaper got thrown across the room in frustration. Now I just laugh because we can do any kind of diaper but still grab the Velcro first. (Now it’s Tots Bots Velcro)
I always thought “daddy friendly” was a little bit of an excuse. Yes, some diapers are trickier than others but you can get the hang of them all if you’re frequently changing them. This just gives dad an excuse to pass on his turn! I do think you should have some “easy” ones on hand for visiting relatives who might be inclined to help out but aren’t part of the regular diaper changing lineup, but dad is probably not on that roster!