Baby Changing Facilities

One of the benefits of having travelled fairly extensively this year with Funsize in tow is that we've had several encounters with baby changing facilities. It's fair to say that some of these are better than others! However, I've generally been reasonably impressed with the provision of facilities - for the most part they've been there when we've needed them, and they've tended to be reasonably good.

That said, there is one thing that really annoys me when I encounter it...

In terms of provision of baby changing facilities, I take the view that there are three options, any of which are at least acceptable:

1. Have a dedicated baby change facility. This is probably the best - have a single room set aside for the changing of babies.
   
2. Place the baby change facility in the disabled toilet. This is probably the next best, in that it provides a single facility for everyone to use. However, it does have the downside that sometimes disabled people need to use the facilities, and sometimes when you've got to go...
   
3. Duplicate the baby change facilities in both sets of toilets. Sometimes, this is the only available option. And it's fine, since it does provide facilities for everyone to use. However, it suffers from being inefficient, since you have a relatively little used facility in two places, and it also runs the risk that the real baby change facility is the one in the ladies' while the one in the men's is allowed to degrade...

And that brings me to the thing that really annoys me, and the option that I don't think is acceptable:

4. Place the baby change facility in the ladies' toilets only.

Fortunately, we've encountered this only rarely, and only ever when we've been together, so we've never actually been caught out by it. And if it ever did happen, I'm confident (arrogant?) enough that I'd make no bones about going in and using said facility. But it's still something that continues to annoy me when I do see it. Partly because of the potential issues that might arise and/or the issue of children not being changed when they actually need it. But also because of what it says, and continues to say about gender roles - both that it is expected that mothers will be around to look after children and also that it is expected that fathers will not be looking after children, certainly on their own. But if we're serious about equality, both those assumptions must be challenged.

(That said, I'm not convinced we actually are all that serious about equality... but that's another rant.)