Dad Advocates For Changing Tables In Men's Bathrooms Because It's 2016, For Crying Out Loud

After a frustrating experience trying to change his baby in a public restroom with no changing table, one dad took action.

Another day, another dad begging for the ability to change his child’s diaper in public without having to kneel on a repulsive bathroom floor. What a time to be alive, right? 1962 is going to be a great year! Oh, wait. It’s 2016. We have exploding hoverboards, but still no changing tables in every men’s bathroom. Got it.

Seeing as how we’re all progressive and modern these days, wouldn’t it be nice if every restaurant and business recognized that fact and equipped their men’s bathrooms with a changing table? One awesome stay-at-home dad thinks so and has started a blog called Dads Who Change Diapers to help keep track of the businesses that accommodate fathers who perform the radical act of changing their own kids.

The inspiration for his blog struck while Scotty Schrier was out to eat with his wife at a local Ruby Tuesday’s. Their baby boy needed a new diaper and Schrier volunteered to take care of it. He tells K5 News of his inconvenient experience saying, “Being the involved dad, I’m like yeah honey, I got this, you know so I grabbed the diaper bag, I grabbed the kid and it never dawned on me that I might walk into the bathroom and there wouldn’t be a changing station.”

Aww, that’s adorable. He really had no clue there were still businesses out there that harbor the backward notion that diaper changing is solely women’s work, despite the fact that more and more dads are just as involved in caring for their kids as their female partners. Some even stay at home with their children full-time — I KNOW– it’s crazy talk.

It must be an absolute blast leaving the house alone with your child not knowing for certain whether you’ll have to cozy up to a disgusting bathroom floor to change a poopy diaper. Because changing a poopy diaper isn’t gross enough, let’s make it worse, right? He was understandably upset but he didn’t just get mad — he took action.

Inspired by his irritating experience, Schrier created a helpful tool for dads on his blog. He keeps a listing of businesses that have changing tables in men’s bathrooms so dads can consult it when searching for a place to change their child. This also ensures they’re only patronizing places that accommodate them, hopefully, sending a small message to the businesses that don’t.

Dads can submit locations on their own too so the site has as many entries as possible. All you have to do is type in an address or zip code, specify a distance to search within, and the site will return results letting you know where the changing tables are. This kind of thing shouldn’t be necessary at all but until more public bathrooms are updated, it could come in pretty handy.

The Ruby Tuesday’s where Schrier initially encountered this problem has since installed a changing table in the men’s room but of course, there are still plenty of businesses that need to get with the times. If stories like this keep hitting the news, maybe stores and restaurants will catch on and make their bathrooms 2016-friendly without a dad publicly taking them to task first. Until then, kudos to the ones speaking up and instigating change (pun totally intended).