User:Coop41/Sandbox

Children
Diapers are commonly worn from birth until a person is toilet trained. Replacing a soiled diaper with a fresh one is essential to the prevention of contracting skin irritation of the buttocks, genitalia, and/or the waist. Babies may need to have their diapers changed ten or more times a day. Diapering can also serve as a bonding experience for parent and child. To avoid skin irritation, commonly referred to as diaper rash, the diaper of those prone to it should be changed as soon as possible after it is soiled (especially by fecal matter), as feces contain urease which catalyses the conversion of the urea in urine to ammonia which irritates the skin and can cause painful redness.

The age at which toilet training should begin is a subject of debate and keeping children in diapers beyond infancy can be controversial, with family psychologist John Rosemond claiming it is a "slap to the intelligence of a human being that one would allow baby to continue soiling and wetting himself past age two." Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, however, believes that toilet training is the child's choice and has encouraged this view in various commercials for Pampers Size 6, a diaper for older children. Brazelton warns that enforced toilet training can cause serious long-term problems, and that it is the child's decision when to stop wearing diapers, not the parents'.

While awake, most children no longer need diapers when past two to four years of age, depending on culture, diaper type, parental habits, and the child's personality. However, some children have problems with daytime or more often nocturnal bladder control until eight years or older. Known as enuresis, or more commonly bedwetting, this may occur for a wide variety of reasons and can be both a short-term or long-standing issue. With this as well as the increasing number of obese infants in developed countries, disposables manufacturers are increasing the sizes of their products so that children can remain in diapers for longer. Due to the increase in older children wearing diapers, companies have designed special "training pants" which bridge the gap between baby diapers and normal underwear during the toilet training process. These training pants are distinct from diapers in that they mimic underwear and do not require complex fastening, so children can be changed standing up or even independently without adult assistance. Studies have shown that the use of training pants as opposed to diapers can be effective in speeding up toilet training. Larger versions, such as GoodNites, are available for older children and teenagers who have already been toilet trained but continue to suffer from bedwetting. They are intended to be discrete and similar to underwear, so as to avoid alienating those who find wearing diapers at a late age to be embarrassing. Available in both cloth and disposable versions, they are constructed like a diaper with an absorbent core and a waterproof shell and can be worn at any age until the child stops wetting the bed. Because they can be pulled on and off like underpants, children are able to use the toilet if they feel the need, rather than being forced to wet or soil themselves unnecessarily. Whereas most diapers are unisex, training pants often come in gender-specific versions due to the fact that children become more aware of gender roles as they grow older.

With the development of training pants making it possible for children to change their own diapers, and pediatrictions such as Brazelton claiming that forced toilet training can cause lasting psychological and health problems, children are wearing diapers at a much older age than they did historically. The Children's Health and Wellness website claims that diapering a child can prolong bedwetting, as it sends a "message of permisson" to urinate in their sleep. Dr Anthony Page of the Creative Child Online Magazine claims that children can get used to their diapers and begin to view them as a comfort, and that of the children surveyed, most would rather wear diapers than worry about getting up at night to go to the toilet. In a series of online surveys, Robert A Pretlow, MD, of eHealth International, Inc., cites an identical figure. He argues that if Internet users are representative of society as a whole, these surveys imply that a fetishistic or emotional attraction to diapers may be responsible for these "comfort" cases, and that "these behaviors are a significant cause of enuresis and incontinence." He called for further studies to be done on the topic.

Links to use

 * http://understanding.infantilism.org/abdl_for_bdsmers.php
 * http://parentinguniverse.com/topics/potty_training/kick_diaper_habit.html
 * http://japundit.com/archives/2006/01/26/1918/
 * http://www.hapco.edana.org/flash/hapco/index.html
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6255602.stm
 * http://tendaysindiapers.blogspot.com/

Animals

 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7092855.stm
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/6058888.stm
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7107957.stm
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6902309.stm
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sport/newsid_2271000/2271844.stm