Training pants

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Training pants are absorbent underwear to bridge the gap between diapers and "big kid" underwear during the toilet training process. They are constructed like a diaper with an absorbent core and a waterproof shell. Cloth training pants are made of cotton and can be worn with a rubber or plastic overpant. More commonly used are disposable pants which have a gel core like regular disposable diapers.

Training pants are mostly worn by children ages 2-5 during daytime toilet training. They are worn at night at any age until the child has stopped wetting the bed. Many children wear them while traveling in airplanes or by car. They were developed to make fewer diaper changes for mothers. Also older bedwetting children can pull up the diaper themselves instead of having a parent tape it on.

With the development of training pants, children are wearing "diapers" at a much older age than they did historically. With no "changing" necessary by the mother, children can wet a diaper and go change it very conveniently, thus some children are wearing absorbent products during the day until 4 years of age. In fact, recent studies show that an increasing number of Japanese children are wetting their beds and even wearing diapers full time, well into elementary school.[1][2] Because of this trend, progressively larger diapers are appearing on the Japanese market. One example includes the "Goo.N Refreshing Bigger than Big Size Diapers," intended for seven-year-old boys and girls.

One of the first and most popular brands is Huggies Pull-Ups. Kimberly Clark's Pull-Ups product line also offers Pull-ups GoodNites, intended for older bedwetters up to 70-125+ pounds.

Similar garments are available for adults suffering from incontinence. Depends and other brands carry pull-up versions of their regular adult diapers.

In Japan, "training pants" is a wasei-eigo term meaning "sweat pants".