baby

A father's post about changing his daughter on the "disgusting floor" has gone viral. 

Chris Mau, a 33-year-old father of four, was out with his children when he realised that the youngest, eight-month-old Kali, needed her nappy changed.

The dad from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, stopped in at a McDonald’s, and the three older girls explored the indoor play area while he took baby Kali into the men’s bathroom.

But Mau found himself completely exasperated when he discovered, as he had several times in the past, that there was no change table. They were only in the women’s bathroom.

In a Facebook status published on on May 27, Mau wrote, “I’m getting pretty sick of having to change my daughter on a disgusting floor because the only changing table in the place is located in the women’s bathroom.

“It’s crazy to imagine I know but there are guys who take care of their kids too you asshats,” he continued.

“If it’s a public place with public restrooms in the generation of equality among genders and races then how about making sure us fathers can change our children’s diapers on a goddamn changing table like the mother’s can.

“Am I asking too much?” he concluded.

Since the post was published, is has been liked 64,000 times and shared by almost 150,000 people.

“I’m just kind of puzzled as to why in 2018 this is still such a problem,” Mau told the New Hampshire Union Leader.

The father is not the first person to demand change tables in men’s toilets. In 2015, actor and investor Ashton Kutcher launched a campaign putting pressure on businesses to install them.

At a time when women are more present in the workplace than ever before, and parenting and domestic duties are becoming increasingly shared, the way public places are designed are critically important.

Underlying the structure of restrooms is an assumption that it is mothers, not fathers, who are responsible for child rearing.

And in 2018, that is not how the world works. It’s time public toilets caught up.