Kylie Marsh
THE CHARLOTTE POST
When Michelle Schaeffer-Old started the Diaper Bank of North Carolina in 2013, 1 in 3 families struggled to provide diapers for their children. Today, it’s nearly 1 in 2, or 47%.
Diapers are expensive. In the United States, disposables cost nearly $1,000 annually for every child, according to a study by the National Diaper Bank Network. In North Carolina, 76% of families who have a diaper need are working multiple jobs to provide basic goods. For those who can’t afford diapers, they’re forced to make do with less – even if it means recycling, which Schaeffer-Old says can have an impact on parents’ mental health.
“We’re seeing babies use one diaper a day; we’re seeing families rinsing out and reusing diapers, we’re seeing families use plastic shopping bags and putting toilet paper in them,” she said. “We’re seeing families just go without and make do with what they have.
“It’s heartbreaking. That feeling of, ‘I don’t have a diaper to change their bottom,’ It affects the mother’s mental health knowing they can’t provide this basic need for their baby.”
Charlotte’s poverty rate is 11.6%, or an estimated 99,066 of 850,971 residents according to welfareinfo.org, which tracks financial wellbeing metrics nationally. Although the rate here is lower than North Carolina as a whole, the need for diaper banks remains. In 2022, the federal poverty line for a family of four was $27,750.
“There’s a lot of room to grow in Charlotte,” Schaeffer-Old said, “and we’re working on that,” adding that inflation has taken a toll on working families. “Food costs more, rent costs more, everything costs more, and families are making exactly the same amount. Everything just costs more, and minimum wage has not risen at the same rate to keep up with inflation.”
North Carolina’s poverty rate is 13.4%, with an estimated 1.3 million of the state’s 10.2 people living in poverty, which is 4.69% higher than the national average of 12.8%. North Carolina’s children are particularly hard hit by poverty, with 20.2% of the state’s poor under age 5 – 575,000 people.
The Charlotte diaper bank opened in 2022 and serves about 2,000 babies a month in addition to providing adult diapers and menstrual products, which are taxed as non-essential items in North Carolina.
Although there are federal food assistance programs, they don’t cover essential products like diapers or menstrual products.
“We’re seeing a greater need for food than we ever have,” Schaeffer-Old said. “There are many, many programs supporting food. There’s one program supporting diapers. When I go on talks and I share that WIC and food stamps do not cover diapers, you should see the shock on people’s faces. One hundred percent of the time, if someone cannot afford food, they cannot afford any of these items.”
A year ago, North Carolina State Sen. Natasha Marcus (D-Mecklenburg) introduced SB503, the Menstrual Products Sales Tax Exemption, and SB556, the End Menstrual Poverty Act.
SB503 would exempt menstrual products, which Marcus says are basic healthcare items, from state sales taxes. Also known as the “pink tax,” the tariff on feminine necessities forces low-income people and their families to bear a heavier burden or limits access.
“The idea of our bill is simply that that’s discriminatory and unfair to people who menstruate,” she said. “They do have to pay an additional sales tax on top of when the cost of these products is already high,” Marcus said.
Marcus said conservative Republican lawmakers, who are mostly men, ignore the bills despite lowering taxes on North Carolinians being a main talking point.
“I think sometimes, legislators, particularly male legislators, don’t feel comfortable talking about issues that relate to menstruation,” Marcus said. “Maybe they don’t want to touch the bill because it makes them have to think about things or say words that make them uncomfortable.”
SB566 would allocate $350,000 to the Diaper Bank of NC to provide menstrual products and other hygiene items. The Feminine Hygiene Products Grant Program, which allocated grants of up to $5,000 for public schools to buy feminine hygiene products, proved to have a significant impact on improving student attendance.
“All of the money was used up really quickly by schools across the state,” said Marcus, noting that Republican budget writers saw the necessity to fund the initiative. “That’s a little bit of progress. It gives us hope that we’re making inroads and that they’re beginning to understand that it’s important not just to have a budget but to increase school attendance for success in education,” she said. “There is that spot of hope that we can make progress if we keep working.”
Diaper Bank of NC also serves 800 military families, where 63% of them cannot afford diapers or feminine products, which leads to “period poverty.” For working families, those items often take a backseat to housing, food and utilities.
“This is about working families, military families, teachers,” Schaeffer-Old said. “This is something that every single baby needs, every single menstruating individual needs. … “They’re thinking about food and shelter. They need clothing. They’re going to skip out and make do with what they have in terms of diapers.”
The diaper bank serves 65 of North Carolina’s 100 counties thanks to grants and individual donors. The nonprofit has warehouses to store donations before moving them to families in need.
“It’s not sustainable for us right now,” Schaeffer-Old said. “We are not able to meet the need fully. The need is greater than any one nonprofit.”
Despite economic growth in counties like Mecklenburg and Durham, where Diaper Bank branches are located, there are still needs, even in the state’s urban centers. For example, 1 in 4 census tracts in Durham is a “diaper desert.”
“There are places like Winston-Salem,” in Forsyth County, Schaeffer-Old said. “There’s a lot of money there, there’s a lot of wealth, but you have a lot of poverty as well.”
Low-income families were found to not only have to spend more money for diapers but must invest more resources to access them. On average, diaper prices at small retailers in low access census tracts are 36% higher than at big box stores and can cost over $100 a month. Corner stores, Schaeffer-Old found, sold diapers out of the pack in threes for $1.50 apiece.
“Not only were they more expensive; they were outrageously expensive,” she said.
The NC Diaper Bank is part of a national network of banks in the country, but they don’t all receive resources across the board. Some states and counties have funding for diaper banks written into their budgets. Schaeffer-Old says she’d like to be able to make the case for more aid to North Carolina legislators.
“We’re not seeing the state say we value these kinds of items for our community members,” she said. “Other states are supporting the diaper banks in their community. Unfortunately, in our state, they’re not very good at working across the aisle. It’s as much lobbying as educating about what’s happening in their communities that they say they represent and care for.”
