I had a thought the other day: in 5 or 6 years, when our daughter is (gasp!) old enough to go to the bathroom by herself, what happens when she’s with Dad and not Mom and Dad, and there’s no family bathroom?  What does Dad do?

Now, the way I see it, there are a couple of options: Dad can take her into the men’s bathroom with him (once it’s emptied and there are no exposed, uh, parts), or Dad can suck it up and go into the women’s bathroom with her (after announcing himself and his predicament).  One thing that will NEVER be an option is letting my child go into any bathroom alone–I don’t understand parents who think that 5 is an appropriate age to go into an occupied bathroom alone, but that’s for another blog.

I asked Dad what he would do in that situation, and he said he would just take her into the men’s bathroom.  To deal with the urinating men, he would have her close her eyes until they were in the safety of a stall.  Not a bad idea, by any means, but I don’t know that I agree with that.  I think I would feel more comfortable if he took her into the women’s bathroom.  But he brought up a good point: he would never be allowed to go into an occupied women’s bathroom without some stupid sensitive broad crying about a cock in the hen house.  Sometimes, women can be a real drag.

Now, if the roles were reversed, and our son was out with me and needed to go to the bathroom, there would be absolutely no problem with me taking him into the women’s bathroom.  No one would even bat an eyelash.  So why is that?  Why the double standard for mom’s and dad’s?  A father out with his daughter should be able to take his daughter into the correct bathroom to pee.  Why should our daughter have to pee in the men’s bathroom just because she enjoys hanging out with her dad?  There need to be more family bathrooms in order to deal with this little dilemma, in my humble opinion.  Clearly, this needs to be dealt with.

Luckily, we have at least a few years before we need to deal with this situation (and many more like it, I’m sure).  Hopefully, by the time our potty trained daughter and her dad go out for father-daughter time, there will have been an increase in family bathrooms for just this reason.  If not, well, there are going to be a lot of pissed off ladies sharing their bathroom with my hubby and his little girl.  And too bad for them.