Diapers, frugality, and poverty (open topic)

As often seems to be the case, the comments section in this Slate article are more interesting than the article itself, about poor mothers who reuse diapers because they can’t afford new ones.  Specifically, the dump the poop out and rediaper the child until it’s full of pee. 

Now, the article has a few holes — the author says that cloth diapers aren’t an option because the daycare won’t accept them, but clearly the diaper re-using is happening at home, not at daycare.  She points out that diapers can’t be bought with food stamps, and, even if it were possible, food stamps aren’t even enough to pay for the family’s food, so there’s not enough cash left for diapers.  (I’m doubtful of that — at the full benefit level, it seems very doable, especially for infants who aren’t actually eating much if anything, and are getting WIC in addition, or school kids getting breakfast and lunch for free at school.  The “food stamp money runs out” issue is for those working families who only get partial benefits, because they’re supposed to only need supplemental help.)

And the comments are full of discussions of whether daycare is really an impediment to using diapers, with one mom describing her system for cloth-diapering at daycare, and others disputing whether the “can’t afford diapers” crowd really has kids in daycare.  (Most likely, we’re talking about home daycares rather than daycare centers.)  And then there’s another discussion about whether the effort of cleaning diapers is prohibitive or not, especially if the home doesn’t have a washer and laundromats may or may not prohibit washing diapers there, so hand-washing may be necessary.  (Side note:  apparently, the spell-checker thinks laundromat is a proper noun — was it a trademarked term that moved into general usage?) 

(My own reaction:  is it really such an awful thing to “reuse” an otherwise dry diaper?  Are these kids getting rashes by keeping wet diapers on, or is this just that bit of practicality that comes from sufficient time spent diapering, so that you’re no longer grossed out by poop?)

But the largest majority of comments are of the “if you can’t afford to take care of your kids, don’t have ’em” variety, leading me to wonder whether some conservative blogger linked to this piece.

And that’s really the far bigger question:  how much assistance (financial and in-kind) does society (that is, the government) have a responsibility to provide to the poor, and, in particular, to single mothers? 

There’s the frequent argument that the pro-life movement should support significant quantities of support to the poor, so that no woman feels she needs to choose abortion out of poverty — but “enough money that no woman feels she needs to get an abortion” is a pretty high threshold, given that there are woman all along the financial spectrum who get abortions for financial reasons and I suspect this is really more of a “fragile middle class” issue than one for women in poverty.

But the bigger question is, how do you minimize the cost of welfare, maximize the likelihood that the mom will be the mythical Julia (who does, after all, end up supporting herself) rather than on welfare perpetually, and neither punish the kid nor perpetuate the cycle of poverty?  Of course, mandatory sterilization is not an option in the year 2013.

I’m still trying to figure out how I can make an argument against single parenting and a proposal to decrease it — and this fits in there.  As always, comments welcome.