Design’s Dirty Secret

Toilet Designs and Social Norms

Tamara Shipley, MSD Candidate | Arizona State University

Introduction

The notion of an individual, a child, who is all by itself with the world of objects is a completely
artificial abstraction. The individual is not simply thrown into the human world; it is introduced into
this world by the people around it; and they guide it into that world. (Leontiev, 1981, p. 135)
Introduction

“The toilet is the icon of the twentieth century” (Morgan 2002, p. 171). As an industrial object that
resides in nearly every public and private place imaginable in the United States, the toilet is a
gleaming example of how form follows function, and how technology engages society to create
values and practices. Toilets are regularly designed, exhibited, and used and yet they remain a
taboo object, relegated to the hidden corners of our private and public spaces. An examination of
this mundane object, used daily by all Americans, offers a potential wealth of information
regarding the relationship between product and person.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of products as vessels for the transfer of social
practices and norms using a case study. An examination of the ritual of toilet training will
demonstrate how social roles are transmitted from parent to child, thereby ensuring the
preservation of culturally determined values and behaviors. Because “the practices surrounding
toilet training are distinctive for all cultural groups” (Monsen 2001, p. 375) this study focuses
solely on such practices in contemporary American society and how they reflect an overriding
social ideology that is continually evolving.

Toilet training is undertaken by parents and child-care providers who determine a method for
socializing a child to an adult object, the toilet. “Parents and other care givers play a crucial role in
introducing their infants to the shared/conventional meanings of objects by first drawing the
child’s attention to the object, and then demonstrating how it is used” (Williams and Costall, 2000,
p. 98). Strategies vary and recommendations from the pediatric realm of medicine continually
evolve according to developments in research and culture. The experience between parents and
child in relation to the toilet offers insight into the complex system of individual and societal values
that inform adult behavior. "Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be
reflected in the kind of society that these families create” (Satir, 1988, p. 360).

In the field of design, there is a growing recognition of the value of studying objects in the context
of culture. “Designers have a professional obligation to recognize the cultural meanings they
produce, and to develop an ethical position and criteria by which they can evaluate not just the
aesthetic and economic aspects of their work, but also its meaning and application in society”
(Grant and Fox, 1992, p. 78). As an object that is used daily by nearly every human in the
country, it is obvious that a greater understanding of the toilet and its societal ramifications can
offer significant opportunities for impacting our interactions with objects of the built environment,
our personal relationships, and our social ideology.

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