A dad in Oregon has helped out many other fathers by encouraging his church to add a changing table to the men’s bathroom.
Clint Edwards, the dad of three behind “No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog,” wrote on Facebook on June 16 that his church didn’t have a changing table in the men’s bathroom, which frustrated him.
“As a father with a young child I really hate when I can’t change my kid,” he wrote. “This isn’t to say that I enjoy changing a squirmy poopy toddler. I don’t. No one does. But I dislike placing the full burden of changing every single diaper on my wife even more. This whole parenting gig is a partnership.”
In October, former President Barack Obama required both men’s and women’s bathrooms in publicly accessible federal buildings to have changing tables after he signed the Bathrooms Accessible in Every Situation Act, also known as the BABIES Act, into law. In 2015, Ashton Kutcher started a Change.org petition asking Target and Costco to ensure both their men’s and women’s bathrooms had changing tables.
However, Edwards told HuffPost it’s still “pretty common” for him to go into men’s bathrooms in other buildings and discover there isn’t a changing table. In his post, he pointed out that he realized not all women’s bathrooms included changing tables, but they commonly have one more often than men’s bathrooms.
Edwards told HuffPost he mentioned the lack of a changing table to some of his church leaders about a month ago in a meeting. He said everyone quickly “got on board” with his idea.
“I was one of two younger fathers in the room, and we were both frustrated by the situation,” he told HuffPost. “The mothers in the room were thrilled with the idea of adding a changing table. It actually went a lot smoother than I thought. I honestly just needed to speak up. Although, I don’t know if it’s always this easy.”
According to Edwards, the church installed the changing table last week. In his post, he celebrated the change, calling it “a win.”
“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.”
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