After a very brief holiday, Baby Change Facility of the Week is back. I’m afraid other things kept me a little too busy over the past couple of weeks to give this feature the attention it deserves.
I’m returning with something slightly different. It’s an image I took a couple of months back while on a cross channel ferry with my daughter during a day trip to France.
The picture has been languishing on my phone ever since and only now am I getting round to doing anything with it. What I’d like you to do is decide whether you think it is amusing or not.
If you can picture the scene, my daughter needed to, ahem, ‘take care of business’ and I had no choice but to accompany her to the gents. This passed without incident, but to my amazement there was a very good baby changing facility in the gents’ lavatory.
If I were asked where I expected to find such a thing provided for us dads, a roll-on roll-off ferry would come somewhere near the bottom of the list. I was a delight to have such poor expectations shattered.
The only thing is, the sign on the door for this superb facility was the one above. As you’ll see it depicts a woman holding a baby. I confess I laughed out loud when I saw it as a gents lavatory was a very odd place for such a sign.
As I’ve said in the past, such things are minor irritations when compared to some of the rubbish us dads have to contend with (attitudes of some health workers, being accused of “babysitting” your own children, paternity leave etc). That said, it’s still a very odd thing to come across.
What’s your opinion? Is it funny? Is it serious? Is it a minor irritation? Does it demonstrate us dads have a problem being taken seriously sometimes?
3 thoughts on “Baby Change Facility of the Week No5”
I smiled when I saw your picture of the sign. One day, in my frantic search for a baby changing facility (mum was having some ‘me time’) I was stopped in my tracks by a similar sign. I pondered the sign in a perplexed way…my brain struggling to know how to make sense of it. “Can or can’t I go in?…What will people think if a man goes in the door with a picture of a person with a dress holding a baby?” Sine then I started looking out for similar signs. A bit of me feels mildly irritated by them, but I don’t make too much of an issue about it.
Gerhard (Familiality)
As ever Gerhard, a great comment. I find such signage slightly irritating. There are more important things to worry about but I think us dads should speak up about it or things will never change.
I saw a similar issue with signage and baby changing facilities abroad as an expat in the gulf and malayisa about two years ago. Most of these places did not even have such facilities for dads to change their babys( the attitude was men work, women wet nurse)
the one exception was the failry new bahrain mall in manama which had for every male and female toliet a baby changing room with just a baby symbol in it. In addition to disabled toilets they also had a parent and child toilet with the appropiate male or female stick symbol holding the hand of a child. These facilties are put in to allow any parent to take their male or female child to the toilet in privacy. my former wife at the time also confirmed the same layout for womens toilets.
This did seem at odd with the general attitude amongst both the locals and expats and i can only assume they are still there. I would have liked to know what prompted this attitude because we could do with a lot more of it here.
BTW – just stumbled onto your blogfrom insideman. I was a SAH dad for nearly two years for my disabled child( we shared the same disability) as expats in the gulf, but my wife resented it and the disapproval she got from others despite it the huge benefit of career for her and of course the salary with the obvious consequences that I read about in the media. Noted that you mention your wife gets some of this, but obviously not so bad. well done to you both for making a brave decision in the face of such ignorance from some in society. I think you both have set a very good example to your children