This post is directed at all the self-righteous moms on social media who are constantly gloating in comment sections everywhere that they “had their kids out of diapers by the time they could walk,” acting as if that makes them superior mothers and human beings. Or as if moms who wait until signs of readiness are failing.

A while ago, I published a Question That Keeps Me Up At Night post wondering if the fact that my two-year-old was still in diapers made me an inferior mom. All you social media attention whores got to my head a bit, I guess. Since writing that post, I’ve looked into the issue a bit more, and have arrived at a conclusion.

I don’t care that your kids were out of diapers early. I don’t care that you did “elimination communication.” It doesn’t make you better in any way. It doesn’t make you less lazy than anyone. All it means is that you chose a less common route to potty training. You turned left, I turned right — so what, if we both got from point A to point B.

For the child, there is no long-term benefit to potty training earlier. Children who learned elimination communication, or who potty trained at age one, have no psychological, emotional, or physical advantages over kids who potty trained at age two to three. If there were such advantages, I’d certainly try to force my kids out of diapers earlier. But there are not.

I recently had a conversation with my one-year-old’s pediatrician about this. She randomly brought up in conversation how she had worked with babies from a different culture (of which there is a relatively large community in my area), and she mentioned that, in that culture, it’s very common for kids to potty train around the time that they start walking. “Isn’t that interesting?” she asked, conversationally.

“Hm,” I replied, frowning, because instantly all you obnoxious loudmouthed social media moms sprang to the forefront of my mind, and I wondered if my pediatrician was trying to shame me too. “Is there really any advantage, though, to doing that earlier? For the child?” I asked.

“No,” she said simply, and explained that the advantage for those families who potty train earlier is simply: convenience. For families who use cloth diapers and want to lighten their laundry load, earlier potty training makes sense. It reduces the family’s stress. That’s the advantage.

But for families who use disposable diapers, it’s much easier to train when the child is a little older. Some of you people like to claim “toilet readiness” is a scam — but really, that’s just an incredibly ignorant and stupid claim to make. I currently have four kids, ages six to fifteen months, and there is always a point, usually around age two, when they begin to understand their bodily functions better and naturally develop an interest or aptitude for going to the potty. Potty training goes way faster and more smoothly if you start around this age.

“Disposable diapers are a crime because they contribute so much waste to landfills,” you might be arguing. “The only environmentally-responsible way is to use cloth diapers.”

Please. I have a lot of thoughts about this accusation. Yeah, sure, disposable diapers add waste to the landfills. Does that really make a significant difference at all, in the grand scheme of things? No.

You and I, the little people, have had guilt and blame foisted upon us for climate change, for as long as we can remember. We’ve been told we need to be more responsible, we need to recycle and cloth diaper and bring our reusable bags to the store and all that, and if we don’t do all of those things, we’re an eco-criminal and it’s our fault it’s 90°F in late October. When in reality, there’s nothing you or I can do, in the context of our ordinary little daily lives, that will make any difference at all.

It’s the big corporations, the airlines, the meat industry, and the AI data centers, that are responsible for climate change. Not you and me. Big Corporations (which are one and the same entity as politicians, here in the US — they’re all in it for the money) love to try to blame you and me, to make us stress about little things like diapers and grocery bags, as a distraction from what’s really going on. “Just recycle your plastic!”, they tell us, which btw is a huge logistical hassle for most of us small-town Americans, and it’s common knowledge that recyling plastic is a futile practice anyway, so why go out of our way like this when the people who could actually make a difference, never will. And they try to pin the blame on us and our disposable diapers.

The reality is, even if every parent across the globe switched to cloth diapers full time, and all companies just stopped even producing disposable diapers, just stopped cold turkey, it would still only be a mere drop in the bucket, when it comes to saving the planet. It wouldn’t do a lick of real good, as long as these huge businesses and politicians don’t care. So stop trying to lay the blame and shame on me.

My kids’ disposable diapers are not the problem. They’re not even a problem.

A real, tangible problem, though, in my household and in most families’ households, is: stress. Disposable diapers reduce my family’s stress. As manager of my household, it is my responsibility, my solemn duty, to reduce stress as much as possible in my home. Therefore, disposable diapers are a good and important tool.

If it reduces stress in your household to force your kids onto the potty as soon as they can walk — sure! Go right ahead. If that works for you all, it doesn’t matter. But don’t go around shaming moms who are also trying to reduce stress in their households. We’re not putting our kids at a disadvantage. We’re not harming the environment. We’re not doing any worse than you are.

Now, I will grant that there are plenty of lazy parents out there in the world today: parents who still haven’t bothered to train their three-, four-, even five-year-olds. My kids don’t go to public school, so I can’t confirm this, but I’ve heard tell that some kids are even showing up to kindergarten still in diapers — as if the parents expect the kindergarten teacher to toilet train their child! Good grief. That’s lazy and shameful behavior. I would argue that, at this point, you are putting your child at a disadvantage in life.

There are some exceptions, of course. If your child has special needs of any kind, that is a different ballpark altogether. But otherwise there’s no excuse to not have your 4+ year old out of diapers, at least during the day. Nighttime bed-wetting is also a different issue, and has little to do with being successfully potty trained or not; plenty of fully toilet-trained kids still wet the bed on occasion. I’m just talking about general, daytime situations. Parents should have their neurotypical kids out of diapers well before age four. It’s not that hard.

But the pressure to have it done before age two? Please. That’s ridiculous. It’s not better to do it earlier than two, unless your particular life circumstances demand it. Is it possible to fully potty train before two?: sure! Does that mean it is better or ideal to do it then?: No! Not at all.

So check yourself before you go gloating on the internet, as if you are somehow a superior parent. Making life easier, at no disadvantage to your child or the environment, is neither a crime nor a failing.

So I don’t care that my grandparents’ generation toilet trained their kids at age one, or that it’s still done that way in certain cultures or communities. I don’t care that you did it. I’m going to continue to keep my kids in disposable diapers until they reach a stage where training is a lower-stress process for my family.

Now, I’m aware that mothering can feel like invisible work. When you’re not out in the adult world earning an income, and when all your hard daily work yields little in the way of visible, tangible results, it can be easy to get desperate for praise and acclaim. For recognition. To be heard. (Probably why I have this blog, tbh.) Maybe that’s what you’re going through. Maybe you feel like you need people to be impressed by you, to tell you you’re doing a good job. Well, here you go!: I see you. You are doing a good job. Not just toilet training, which is dirty work at any age, but parenting in general. Your work is meaningful, and in all seriousness, I’m proud of you.

But really, must you go about gloating and trying to make other moms feel inferior just because you decided to take on an extra, unnecessary, ultimately-meaningless burden? Your boasting is no more necessary than potty training before age two. Let’s take half a second to check ourselves, shall we, before commenting. — And you want to talk about “lazy.”