A woman in Virginia was frustrated to find a man using the ladies bathroom at a restaurant she was dining out at—but not for the reason you might think.
Lauren Dodds, a writer based in Richmond, told Newsweek she was dining out at a “pretty nice restaurant” when she went to use the restroom and was confronted by a man who was almost immediately “apologizing for being there.”
“I wasn’t shocked,” Dodds said. “He was clearly concerned that I would be, but I could see he was changing a baby.”
Dodds has seen plenty of unusual things in women’s bathrooms over the years. “Women’s bathrooms are in general more communal than men’s,” she said.
“It’s not always a ‘get in and get out without making eye contact’ situation. It’s a ‘hey we need to help Tina with her wardrobe malfunction because she’s about to meet her future in-laws’ situation. So I think most women take everything in stride.”
There was something about this particular situation, however, that gave her pause for thought.
It turned out the man had been left with little choice but to enter the women’s bathroom facilities after he discovered there were no baby changing facilities in the men’s.
Dodds, who is a parent herself, talked to her husband about what she had seen. It turned out this was far from an isolated experience. “My husband told me he’s had to change our kids on the sink and once on top of a hand dryer,” she said.
The more Dodds thought about the encounter and what it symbolized, the more she considered the inherent implications of what not having baby changing facilities in a men’s bathroom, in this day and age, meant.
“It’s just so strange to me that in 2025, it’s assumed that only women would ever be responsible for changing a baby,” she said.
Dodds felt compelled to share the experience so, without naming the restaurant involved, took to Threads, posting under the handle @l.m._dodds, to share the story.
In the post, she recalled her “immediate feeling” when seeing why the man was there being not one of “oh dear how can I pee in the same place as a man?” but rather “it’s 2025, how tf are places still not putting changing tables in all the bathrooms?”
The role of the father has undoubtedly shifted over the past few decades. Much of this shift can be attributed to a move away from a family unit where the dad serves as a sole breadwinner.
In 2016, Pew Research Center data showed just 27 percent of couples with children younger than 18 were part of families where only the father worked.
This represents a dramatic shift from data collected in 1970 showing 47 percent of couples were part of families where the dad was the breadwinner. The shift towards dual income families has seen couples not only share financial but also parental responsibility
Yet it would appear that, in some respects, society has failed to keep up with these changes. That appeared to be the main takeaway from Dodds’ post, which earned over 13,000 likes and a glut of comments.
Some users based in the U.S. shared similar stories. “We went to a very large children’s museum a few years back. My husband walked into the men’s restroom only to find no changing table,” one user commented. “We need more family restrooms.”
Another wrote: “My son queued for the ladies in Starbucks 13 years ago to change his daughter’s nappy. Some things don’t change.”
Others shared different experiences. “When our girls were little I was thankful so many places in and around Chicago had changing tables in men’s rooms, but there were many without,” one said.
While many overseas appeared not to have encountered the issue. “Most places I go to in the U.K. have a baby change toilet and/or a disabled toilet if you need privacy or a table,” one user said.
Dodds believes it’s important for restaurants and other businesses to offer bathrooms “equipped for everyone.”
“At the very least, if you’re going to have gendered bathrooms, then put a changing table in both,” she said. “Or have a separate family room so there’s also a clean place to breastfeed.”
Whether that becomes a reality, remains to be seen.
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