A Canadian in Beijing: Naked Baby Bums Everywhere! {Gadling}

May 19th 2007 10:02AM I am extremely jealous of this aspect of Chinese culture. Imagine how much easier it would be for mothers! I currently have a 31 month old and a 16 month old. With every sopping, heavy bag of wet diapers and training pants that I haul to the washing machine, I wish that this behavior was socially accepted in our culture. For every half hour I spend clipping strings of wet diapers to the clothesline, for every 2-5 minutes that I have lost to changing diapers, for every 10 minutes of interruption during a shopping trip of dragging a stinky child to the restroom to be changed, for every cheezy book about potty training that I read to my kids, I wish this practice was accepted here.

I have read a lot about EC (Elimination Communication) which is used in conjunction with the crotchless pants, and I even tried it for a while, at home anyway. But it doesn't work well in this society's culture. There are a couple of split seconds when I wished I lived in China or Viet Nam or India, and then I bounce back to reality and secure the diaper tabs.

No, the children do not just go anywhere and there are not constant accidents. I'm sure there are a few--- we even have accidents with our culture's methods, but for the most part there are none. From birth the babies are taught when and where to go through elimination communication. From birth the mother can hold the baby in a squatting position over a vessel or acceptable patch of ground or whatever and make a verbal sound to signify that it's time to go. The mother is also more in tune with her baby and will recognize when the baby needs to go. After a couple few weeks of this, the baby learns to wait for the sound before it goes. And of course, as the baby grows into a toddler, it becomes better at communicating when it needs to go. So simple. So practical. So natural. It's things like this that make the U.S. seem so wierd to the rest of the world.