A new doll is soon to be available in American toy stores that will imitate breast-feeding. The girl wears some sort of halter top with a sensor that when the doll’s face comes near it will start cooing and moving like a suckling child. Apparently it’s causing quite a controversy already.
Part of me understands this only because it’s something new and different than we’re used to. And there’s always a semi-understandable “oddness” factor to something new. But on what grounds would you say that a doll that pretends to drink a bottle or pees in its diaper or cooes or imitates sleep is right but a doll that breast feeds is inappropriate? Can you really defend the position that all those other aspects of making a doll as lifelike as possible are good but this one is somehow forbidden? Is this the one aspect of mothering which is so distasteful we have to keep our young girls from reenacting it?
I know this is going to surprise some people, but my own boys (at least Spence and Ethan, the 6 and 4) both grew up seeing their younger brothers being breast-fed by mom. And you know what they did? Both of them at different times thought it was cute to imitate mom with their own dolls or stuffed animals. If this is a such universal and natural impulse by all children that even boys might do it, why not girls?
Some people are complaining that this is oversexualizing them. I don’t understand that at all. Would a girl who imitates this without using a special doll to do so be engaging in some inappropriate self-sexualization? Oversexualizing girls means turning them into objects of sexual desire. Enabling them to fantasize (play, imagine) about the day when they might have their own child to nurture and care for with their bodies is the most non-sexualizing (in the erotic sense we object to) thing I can imagine. In fact, if anything, it more reinforces the normalcy and health of having children and feeding them with your body, being a living gift to your children.
Part of me understands this only because it’s something new and different than we’re used to. And there’s always a semi-understandable “oddness” factor to something new. But on what grounds would you say that a doll that pretends to drink a bottle or pees in its diaper or cooes or imitates sleep is right but a doll that breast feeds is inappropriate? Can you really defend the position that all those other aspects of making a doll as lifelike as possible are good but this one is somehow forbidden? Is this the one aspect of mothering which is so distasteful we have to keep our young girls from reenacting it?
I know this is going to surprise some people, but my own boys (at least Spence and Ethan, the 6 and 4) both grew up seeing their younger brothers being breast-fed by mom. And you know what they did? Both of them at different times thought it was cute to imitate mom with their own dolls or stuffed animals. If this is a such universal and natural impulse by all children that even boys might do it, why not girls?
Some people are complaining that this is oversexualizing them. I don’t understand that at all. Would a girl who imitates this without using a special doll to do so be engaging in some inappropriate self-sexualization? Oversexualizing girls means turning them into objects of sexual desire. Enabling them to fantasize (play, imagine) about the day when they might have their own child to nurture and care for with their bodies is the most non-sexualizing (in the erotic sense we object to) thing I can imagine. In fact, if anything, it more reinforces the normalcy and health of having children and feeding them with your body, being a living gift to your children.
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