Karl, pictured with Juno, says ‘if you can’t change your baby there, it feels like a message that you’re not welcome’.Karl, pictured with Juno, says ‘if you can’t change your baby there, it feels like a message that you’re not welcome’.Dads and male caregivers are being given a bum deal in toilets throughout the UK, according to a campaign that is pushing for a change in the law.
The campaign is also pushing for legislative change that would make it a requirement for all restaurants and public toilets to have baby changing facilities available to men and women. No official data regarding changing facilities exists, but parent volunteers of the campaign researched 500 public toilets in their neighbourhoods across three towns and cities and found only 15% had baby change facilities accessible to all caregivers.
“Thirty-two years ago my wife died in childbirth and I was a widowed father of a newborn baby girl and a one-year-old daughter,” he said. “Whenever we left home, I used to have to wait outside the female toilets and ask strangers for the opportunity to enter their facilities to change the baby’s nappy. It was humiliating.”