Dad Celebrates Getting Church to Install a Changing Table in Men's Room
Clint Edwards doesn't want you to think he particularly likes changing a wiggly toddler's poopy diaper, but he's a parent, and part of parenting is changing your kids' diapers until they succumb to potty training. However, the thing that really grinds Clint's gears is when he's out in public with his wife and kids and needs to ask his wife to change their child because the women's room has a changing table and the men's doesn't. Or worse yet, when he's alone with his kids, and he needs to change his daughter on the men's room floor or in the trunk of his car because of the lack of resources for dads. (He also gives props to all the single dads out there who never even have the option of passing off diaper duty to their female partners in public.)
Because of this constant struggle and all the frustration that comes along with being a dad who feels like he can't parent to the fullest extent due to society's limitations, he complained to his church and asked if it could install a changing table in the men's room so that his wife, Mel, didn't need to constantly be the one getting up to change their daughter during their time there.
"As a father with a young child I really hate when I can't change my kid . . . " Clint wrote in a post to his blog's Facebook page, No Idea What I'm Doing: A Daddy Blog. "I dislike placing the full burden of changing every single diaper on my wife even more. This whole parenting gig is a partnership. But honestly, this happens a lot."
Clint continued, explaining what led him to ask his church for an upgrade to the men's room:
This isn't to say that every single ladies' room in America has a changing table, because that wouldn't be true. But in my experience, more often than not, the ladies' room has one, and the men's doesn't. And if you are a father reading this, and you refuse to change your child and don't see this as a problem, cut the crap! You are making us all look bad. And if you are a company with a changing table in both restrooms, you rock! So I brought all this up with some people at my church. I mentioned my frustration. I was that irritating dad who asked for change. And boom! I show up one Sunday to this.
In his post, Clint included a photo of the wall by the restroom in his church, which now features a men's room sign signaling the fact that there's a "Koala Kare" baby changing station inside. "So it's a small change. It's one men's room out of a million," he wrote. "But for me, as an active father with a desire to care for my child, it was a serious victory."