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Potty Training in Other Cultures

In North America, most parents are potty training their children usually between the ages of three to four years old. In other cultures around the world, sometimes potty training is done as early as one years old.

The question is, what is the main reason for such a difference in cultures?

Well, first of all, when you look at third-world countries where there is a high rate of poverty, there tends to be a greater need to potty train the child early.

The reason is, in most cases, the husband is out in the field working and bringing the income. He is working all day, and it is usually the mother who is home with the children.

These same countries typically can have families with as much as 6-7 children. So the mother is taking care of a whole bunch of children at one shot. In some cases the children are born one after the other…year after year.

So it is no wonder there could be two or three kids who can potentially be having accidents all over the floor. It is clear to see why parents in some of these cultures are very in tune to having their children potty train at an early age.

In addition to these factors here, in third-world countries most parents cannot afford diapers. Also, there are no washing machines, or in some cases not even running electricity.

Clothing is washed by hand. So are soiled poop diapers or cloth diapers that these families produce. In some instances, there really aren't any diapers used. The kids run around unclothed and in cases are having accidents that can be all over the parents' home. For these reasons, it is extremely important that the child is potty trained as soon as possible.

Now, when you look at the United States, we have done a complete shift or about face in potty training. Today, the child is potty trained a lot later where years ago the child was potty trained a lot earlier. What caused such a shift?

First of all, industrialization. As we became a more industrialized nation, we became dependent on a two-family income. Thus, the mother who was the bearer or the person who took care of the household was no longer home to do so. Since both parents had to work, it was easier to use diapers. This made it easier to send them off to daycare.

Secondly, as diapers came down in price, the cost of cloth diapers went up in price. So it was cheaper for parents to use diapers than it was for them to use cloth diapers. You must remember, there were services that would deliver cloth diapers to parents.

In addition to that, diapers became more and more absorbent. Today you will see many commercial that show the super absorbency of a diaper. The child doesn't even feel wet anymore. Although super absorbency is a great selling point… reality is the child doesn't even know when they have dirtied themselves and they get used to wearing dirty diapers and do not complain about it. Thus, potty training became a later and later thing to do.

Now, back in the early ‘30s and ‘40s again the mothers worked from home, and there were not washing machines in every single home as you see today. Mom also washed clothes by hand. There was a very immediate need to make sure that the child was potty trained as early as possible.

Some of the techniques used by parents back then would be categorized as child abuse today, but it was very readily practiced that way in the early days.

Parents would go so far as to strap children to chairs, and they would keep them strapped for hours at a time until a child would go to the potty. So as you can see in today's society, it is a complete different mentality. Thus, we do not behave that way.

Johanne Cesar
mailto:supportstaff@thepottytrainer.com
203-404-7178