No Small Thing: Framing Diaper Need as a Systemic Issue

Across the country, 1 in 2 families with young children struggle to afford or access diapers required to keep their children clean and healthy. Earlier this year, Spotlight spoke with Frameworks Institute Senior Researcher Elliot Cohen about work Frameworks has done, in conjunction with the National Diaper Bank Network, on how Americans view the issue of diaper need. We spoke with Cohen again recently about new research and a toolkit for communicators that offers more actionable suggestions on how to talk about diaper need in ways that resonate with key audiences and begin to build momentum for systemic change. The transcript of the conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why don’t we start with how this work has moved forward since the last time we spoke?

Absolutely. So, the last time we spoke, we had completed what we call the descriptive phase of the research, where we sort of map the public’s understanding of the particular issue. We’re focusing on diaper need, the fact that an extraordinary number of American families with young kids can’t afford diapers, and that this has long-term health and mental health and economic consequences for families. In that first phase of research, we had understood how the fields of both focusing on diaper need and systemic poverty more generally were understanding this issue and then understanding how the public was thinking about it. We then mapped the gaps and overlaps between the field’s, understanding and the public’s and came up with our own understanding of what the challenges and opportunities for communicators were.

In this new phase of research, which we’ve just completed, we just published a report and a toolkit in order to help communicators. We’ve developed framing strategies that we’ve both experimentally and qualitatively tested in two large, nationally representative randomized controlled experiments, as well as multiple focus groups, where we’ve looked at what are the ways that we can move the public a little closer to the field’s understandings. The field sees this as an urgent issue, an issue that has racial and gender inequities deeply embedded into it. It’s a systemic problem, not an individual problem. It has long-term negative effects. And there are solutions that are on the level of policy. And so, these are really some of the key things that we were trying to move, in terms of looking at how our messages might shift people’s thinking, and we found some really effective and interesting and we hope helpful strategies.

Would you like to walk through some of those strategies?

Sure. I’ve said a little bit about where we want to move people towards, but it’ll be helpful to understand what we also want to move people away from. In the first phase of research, we found people were deeply individualistic when they thought about poverty, and particularly about not being able to afford diapers. People often blamed parents, people held mothers, particularly, responsible based on this idea that mothers are the natural caregiver. People also brought in some pretty prejudiced understandings of which communities were most likely to be experiencing poverty and diaper needs, with lots of racial stereotypes. Longstanding tropes like the “welfare queen” came up. People also thought that diapers were just sort of available through government and community programs. And because people assumed that they were just widely available, if a family didn’t have them, the assumption was that there was something wrong with the parents. People were also really fatalistic about systemic change and thought systemic poverty was natural and longstanding and sort of inevitable.

So, our overarching strategy was to start at the level of how systems are designed essentially, to start big at the level of the bigger system and then zoom into the specifics. This is really useful because people have some intuitive understanding that the larger economic system isn’t working for a lot of people. And when framed correctly, people can see that this is, at least in part, the result of human choices, human decisions.

We have three specific strategies that fit under this broader label of starting big and zooming in. And each one of these specific strategies has their own unique benefits but they all share some commonalities, such as increasing people’s sense that both diaper insecurity and systemic poverty are urgent issues, that they’re important and that they have collective or policy solutions.

The first one was the economy by design strategy. We really started by explaining how the economy is designed for the profit of a few and then situated diaper need within that context—starting at the level of the system and emphasizing that it’s for some and not for the many and that the specifics of diaper need are the result of these larger design choices. And then we end with a call to provide concrete and immediate support for families, but also a call to change the larger economic system to stop a few from profiting at the expense of many people.

By starting big and then zooming in and tying the specific solutions to broader solutions, it helps people see diaper need in systemic terms and helps people recognize that the economy is not working for most people. By emphasizing design, we can help people think a little more critically about what the causes are and what the solutions might be, and we can shift blame onto the system rather than onto individuals.

The level here really matters, as well as the order. We tested a couple different levels of explanation. One focused on people’s experience of poverty, another one on wages and prices and finally one on how the economy as a whole was designed. The broad explanation worked the best.

Oh, that’s interesting. I would’ve thought maybe the wages and prices might have as well.

So did we, which is why we test things! Both the wages and prices and the poverty specific frame did not do well. And in fact, the frame focusing specifically on poverty showed some signs of moving people in the wrong direction.

That does not surprise me, sadly.

People seem to have really individualistic, and sometimes pathologizing and stigmatizing, understandings of people living in poverty. Poverty as a frame focuses on individuals and individual failings and often cuts out the more systemic causes. And a lot of people who work in advocacy, they think of poverty as a systemic issue. But that’s not necessarily what people hear.

We also tested the order starting specific and going broad or starting broad and going specific. And we definitely found that that leading with the larger system is the way to get people thinking about the human choices that go into these larger systems, not the human choices that go into whether or not you have basic needs.

What was the second strategy?

The next strategy that we tested we called the two possible future strategy. We offered a vision of two futures—one, where stronger support systems and better policies were leading to families thriving, having what they need, and then we contrasted that with a more negative vision of a future where the existing problems had not been addressed, things had gotten worse, and families were struggling even more. And we ended with a call to action to enact the policies and to strengthen the support systems that would allow the positive vision to become a reality.

And once again you move from general to specific?

That’s the overarching strategy, and it’s woven throughout these. You want to emphasize the systemic causes and the systemic solutions from the get-go and move people away from individualistic thinking and help them imagine that change is really possible.

We tested a positive vision on its own, and it didn’t do that great. And that’s because you need to touch on people’s actual experience of the world, which is that support systems, particularly right now as they’re being dismantled, are not supporting families the way they need to. But by contrasting these sorts of hypothetical futures, people are a little more open to talking about the possibility of change because they understand that the future is contingent on the choices that we make. In the call to action, we say, we’ve presented you with a choice of two possible futures. Obviously one is better than the other. Let’s take the steps that are necessary to make that happen and make sure families have what they need, including things like diapers.

And the final strategy you tested?

The final strategy that we recommended is the social fabric metaphor. This is where we frame society as an interwoven fabric made out of different support systems and diaper need is a hole in that fabric. The solutions are essentially to make repairs, to strengthen support systems and to mend that hole so people don’t fall through and people have what they need.

Like the other frames, it starts at the level of the system and then it addresses the specific failings as something that can be changed. And it definitely steers clear of any risk of sort of individualist blame by using metaphors that can help people think really concretely about ideas that would otherwise be pretty abstract.

What comes next Elliot? Or is this the end of your work on this topic?

What comes next is that this is now in the hands of advocates and communicators. They’re the real heroes here. They’re the ones who are implementing the strategy in unique contexts. And my hope is really that this is broadly applicable. It doesn’t just help with diaper need, although that’s an incredibly crucial issue that affects so many people. But that this also will affect the entire field of early childhood advocacy. We’re planning a workshop where communicators can get trained and educated on this specific strategy and ask questions about it and learn how to apply it to their specific context.