Yes , the problem is that at least in the USUK , I don ' t know about other places in the past , early potty training was common but it was also common for it to be very punitive . This was unfair because children of a year or so old aren ' t aware enough to understand what ' s happening at least at first , and so what happened was it caused serious issues where the kid would be afraid to peepoop and it would actually cause both physical issues and mental trauma . Once they figured out that the potty training was the cause of the withholding behaviour and trauma , this practice was denounced , but they made the wrong assumption they thought that the problem was the age of the babies , not the punitive methods . So potty training began to be started later , at around 2 or 3 years , but it was common until maybe 30 years ago for parents to be advised to use punitive methods and shame to encourage children to eliminate in the right place . If children showed trauma about this , then it was assumed that they were too young . It ' s only recently that we ' ve realised that punishing a child for toilet accidents is counterproductive and will make the problem worse , but the problem is that there ' s a huge cultural belief that ' s set now which is that potty training too early is inherently harmful . So you won ' t find many parents who are open to the idea . When you get into the subject it ' s clear where the misconception comes from , but it doesn ' t stop people feeling upset at the thought of harsh methods being used on a baby .