Cotton or cellulose fluff, cost savings or convenience, laundry or landfill: For some new parents, choosing between using a cloth or disposable diapers can feel like a big decision. How do you know which kind of diaper will work best for your family?
Advocates for both cloth and disposable Baby Diapers make strident and often conflicting claims about the benefits and drawbacks of each. Depending on who you listen to, you may hear that either disposable or cloth diapers are the cheaper, healthier, more ecological, more convenient, and/or more enlightened way to care for your baby.
In our full reviews of cloth and disposable diapers, we go into detail about the materials, construction, and performance of both types, but here we will address some reasons why parents choose cloth or disposable diapers, and what evidence exists to support them.
Diaper rash and skin health
Proponents of cloth and disposable Baby Pant Diapers both claim that babies wearing their chosen type suffer less diaper rash. After talking to two pediatric dermatologists and reviewing the scientific literature on the topic, it is clear to us that disposable diapers do have the edge in preventing the most common type of diaper rash, irritant diaper dermatitis, which is caused by moisture from urine and feces remaining trapped against the skin. Modern disposables are highly absorbent, and, as we found in testing for our guide, the top performers can keep a baby’s skin dry even after multiple wettings. Dr. Bruce Brod, a pediatric dermatologist who specializes in dermatitis, told us: “The skin is largely better off with disposable diapers because of the technology that evolved”—namely, the use of superabsorbent polymers, which take in and retain many times their weight in liquid. But some babies can develop allergic rashes from certain ingredients used in disposable diapers, including rubber, adhesives, fragrances, and dyes.
The conclusion? Either type of diaper can lead to rashes, but disposable diapers typically keep babies drier and better prevent the common problem of diaper rash caused by moisture.
Potty training
Some cloth diaper companies and educational sites claim that babies who wear cloth diapers potty train earlier than babies diapered with disposables. Besides anecdotal evidence, these sources often cite the fact that the age of toilet training in the US has risen from around 18 months in the 1950s and 1960s to 3 years old today, a climb that tracks the increase in popularity of disposable Adult Diapers, from their introduction in the mid 20th century to today, with over 95 percent of babies in the US using disposables.
Dr. Bruce Taubman, a pediatrician at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and co-author of several studies on toilet training, told us he’s unaware of any scientific evidence that the use of cloth diapers leads to earlier potty training. “To my knowledge, there is no data,” he said, and suggested the change in the age of potty training likely has more to do with changes in family structures and parenting styles over the past several decades.
