The pool at our local high school, is open to the community during the after school hours. A variety of programs are offered for children as well as for those, like myself, who only want to swim laps. I have found that the locker room area that serves the pool is a rich source of material for blogs. For example, the other evening as I entered the locker room area, I saw a father standing with his seven or eight year old daughter who was wrapped in a towel. I dismissed the observation because I knew that children swam the hour before the lap period. Because I had a later date with my wife, I shortened my swim time. When I entered the men’s locker room I saw the man and his daughter standing there a bit embarrassed. She was still in her towel. I finally got what was going on and excused myself so that the father could have privacy to help his daughter change.

I realized then, why he had been standing around earlier. He was waiting for the men’s locker room to empty so he could help his daughter shower and change clothes. He couldn’t take her into the women’s locker room, nor into the men’s so long as either one was occupied. There really was no place for a parent to assist dressing a child of the opposite sex. It is not only young children who are sensitive about changing in front of strangers. In the men’s locker room, to illustrate, I noticed that the boys hung their towels over the locker doors to make a screen while they were changing.

The situation is not unique to pools and showers. I have witnessed the same issue in airports. In the men’s room at Boston’s Logan Airport, I saw a girl of five or six in the room with her face towards the wall, her father held her hand while he helped his young son use the facility. I was appalled at first until I realized that the father had no alternative. He could not leave his daughter alone in the busy airport corridor, and his son was not old enough to handle his toileting needs on his own. Like the father at the pool, this father had to make some difficult choices.

The situation is the same for mothers, although not quite. Boys, young boys at any rate, seem less troubled by going into a women’s bathroom with their mother than do girls going into the men’s room with their father. In any case it is becoming a more commonplace issue as more fathers take a more active role in parenting and the number of single mothers is larger than in the past.

In response, many airports now provide family bathrooms for just this eventuality.

Sometimes there are simple solutions. When I mentioned the father’s problem to the people who run the pool, they immediately suggested using the handicapped bathroom - not used during the after school hours - as a family changing room. If we applaud fathers taking a larger role in parenting, then we have to find ways to facilitate and support fathers who do so.