Since the beginning of humanity, parents have been raising babies and having to cope with smelly wet messes. How parents have dealt with these types of messes has changed over the years, especially among different cultures. Native American tribes are said to have packed grass under rabbit skins to contain their babies waste. Eskimo Inuites placed moss under seal skin.

From 1603 to 1868, Japanese Farmers used a wooden bassinet layered with absorbent materials, topped by a mattress with a hole cut for the babies buttucks. Urine was collected by the layers of ash, rags and straw. This helped to keep the babies dry while the parents where busy working. Even today, in warm climates many parents allow there kids to remain naked below the waist, or in China they still cut a hole out of the bottom of babies pants.

During the Middle Ages, babies were swaddled in long, narrow bands of linen The groin area was sometimes left unwrapped so that absorbent buttock clothes of flannel could be tucked underneath. Often in warm weather bands were removed and children were left unclothed or swaddled only on top. Once the baby was about a year old, they wore small dresses or blouses that fell to the ground with nothing underneath.

Then in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, babies were infrequently bathed or changed. When swaddling clothes were removed to attend to babies' waste, the infants' bottoms were usually just wiped without soap or water and then powdered with absorbent worm-eaten wood dust. Urine-soaked swaddling clothes were dried in front of the fire without being washed and then used again. Urine was believed to have disinfecting properties and filth was often considered protective for infants. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that doctors began to recommend that cloths used as diapers be changed promptly.

In the mid-eighteenth century, popular philosophers criticized swaddling as unhealthful. These criticisms altered the behavior of European aristocrats but had little effect on the practices of the rural poor. English children were not commonly swaddled but dressed in diapers, underpants, woolen dresses with swaddling bands only around their abdomens. Swaddling cloth of oiled silk was developed in the eighteenth century in an attempt to prevent leaks.

A great advance in diapering was the invention of the safety pin 1849. By the late 1800s, infants in Europe and North America were wearing garments similar to the modern cloth diaper. A square of linen or cotton flannel was folded into a triangular or rectangular shape and held in place by safety pins. In the late 1890s, rubberized pants were sometimes used to cover diapers. Diaper rash in the nineteenth century was commonly remedied with burnt flour or powdered vegetable sulfur.

Beginning in the twentieth century, mothers were encouraged by doctors and other child-rearing experts to wash diapers with soap and water and, by the 1930s, diapers were washed and then sterilized with a hot iron or boiled. Commercial diaper laundering services appeared in the United States in the 1930s. Cloth diapers were overlaid with a highly absorbent muslin, oilcloth, or gauze, or, in Great Britain, underpants made of sterilized latex.

Some form of one-use diapers appeared as early as the 1890s, but they were not widely available (and affordable) until the 1960s. The modern disposable diaper was developed by Victor Mills and launched in 1961 under the brand name Pampers. Pampers were an immediate success, even though they initially came in only two sizes, had no tapes, and were quite bulky. Competition for the disposable diaper market soon took off and remedied these flaws.

Some doctors worried that disposable diapers would adversely affect infants' development because of the bulk between the legs, but this fear was assuaged by hourglass-shaped diapers and then by the development of super-absorbent polymers, first patented in 1966, which allowed for the introduction of super-absorbent diapers in 1984.

In 2001, disposable diapers were, on average, three times less bulky than they were in the early 1980s, significantly decreasing transportation, workforce, and storage costs. Since the early 1980s, disposable diapers have faced a great deal of criticism for their environmental impact, a subject which continues to ignite research and debate. Because of their efficiency, some have also accused disposable diapers of delaying toilet-training for young children.

Diapers will continue to grow in usage through out the world, especially as prices continue to drop.