A new doll designed to allow children to play at breastfeeding, as opposed to bottle-feeding is novel. Some of the responses to this doll are novel too.
Managing health editor of FOXNews.com Dr Manny Alvarez said although he supported the idea of breast-feeding, he watched how his own daughter played with dolls and wondered if Bebe Gloton could speed up maternal urges in the little girls who play it.
“Pregnancy has to entail maturity and understanding,” Dr Alvarez said. “It’s like introducing sex education in first grade instead of seventh or eighth grade. Or, it could inadvertently lead little girls to become traumatised. You never know the effects this could have until she’s older.”
Introducing breast-feeding to girls young enough to play with dolls seems inappropriate, Dr Alvarez said.
To which I say Hah ha ha ha! As with all mechanised baby dolls, this one is a little weird. But really, how does the leap from mimicking breastfeeding to early sexual experiences happen exactly? I love the thought process – women are maternal robots, activate us too early and off we go mindlessly seeking out impregnation.
By Alvarez’s logic, we ought to ban *all* baby dolls. Because they just might make six-year-olds want to get pregnant as soon as they hit puberty!
As if for thousands of years of human history when little kids were copying their parents picking berries, making clothes, and “breastfeeding” baby dolls suddenly because we’ve got bottles everywhere pretending to nurse will turn little girls into sex crazed baby machines.
I can remember quite vividly being about seven or eight years old and playing house with my dolls – my dad checked in on me when I happened to be “nursing” one of the dolls and it clearly made him uncomfortable, and he asked me to stop because “that’s not what dollies are for.”
It’s weird, really, just how weird people are about food.
And I don’t actually think there’s logic involved in that particular leap, but then again, maybe that’s what happens with one father trying to deal with his obvious discomfort in a way that allows him to avoid actually dealing with said discomfort.
I have a gorgeous picture of my son, aged 2, with my broken breastpump, attaching it to somewhere near his belly button with great concentration. I wonder what the reaction would be to breastpumping toys?
All children imitate their mothers. It’s part of learning. The boys do it too. So not sure how exactly it would lead to teenage pregnancy.
How very odd. So baby dolls that cry, pee, poo, and drink from a bottle will not cause girls to want to have a real baby, but a breastfeeding doll will? Wow. Breasts really must be magic.
The halter is a bit strange but my goodness, what is the fuss about? Much ado about nothing. What child with a breastfeeding sibling doesn’t do this already?
In all the stuff I’ve read about this today, his comments really, really disturb me. Probably because they come from someone who should know better and not some random jerk-off commenter on a blog or news article.
So, let me get this straight:
Playing Mommy doesn’t make you want to become sexually active.
Feeding a baby doll a bottle doesn’t make you want to become sexually active.
Changing the baby’s diapers, trolling around the house with it in a pretend stroller, or bedding it down for the night in a pretend crib, all fine.
But having said dolly pretend to suck on your boobies, therein lies a problem. It will awaken the world’s 5 year olds to the possibility of sex?
Well, at least we’re setting girls up for the actual ridiculous arguments that will be made at them as they begin nursing their own children. You know, when they’re 13.
I love the righteousness in some of the comments: “Most dolls that are purchased come with a bottle. That is the norm in society, an artificial way to feed your baby.” Yup. Artificial is Normal Dammit!
For what it’s worth, why the hell is it “normal” to introduce sex ed in seventh grade? Surely you introduce sex education when children ask questions? At our house we currently have (from the public library! Shock! Horror!) a book about a home birth (my son is fascinated with babies growing in Mummies tummies and likes to check that there is no baby in his tummy) and Babette Cole’s Mummy Laid an Egg (the kids give the parents some proper sex education). A friend of mine is pregnant, and I’m hoping my kid will start asking loud and embarassing questions of her shortly. Sadly, I fear she is unembarassable.
Eek!
So many levels of weird that I don’t know where to start. Because well, der, pretending to breastfeed a baby is the road to rack and ruin (and so is early parenting too of course.)
But the doll. Good grief. It freaks me out. Strapping on pretend “breasts”, nipples in the shape of flowers…I’m not sure how I feel about that either.
What’s wrong with picking up any old teddy and shoving it on a boob? That’s what my kids have always done – either theirs or mine (imagine MARKETING a breastfeeding animal – My Little Pony on the boob! *shrieks*)
Oh I’d love to see My Little Pony with a suckling foal! The more kids learn about where milk and other foods come from and the wonders of mammal-hood the better in my book. And if this is a marketable solution to normalising breastfeeding then… um, great, I guess. Plastic flower ‘nipples’ are not something I’d be buying for my daughter though…
[...] Blue Milk points out that Fox News is reporting that a breastfeeding doll could push little girls into being sexual too soon. [...]
I think the real problem here is not the doll itself but the halter. It reminds me of the t-shirts the waitresses wear at Hooters.
I laughed out loud at “women are maternal robots, activate us too early and off we go mindlessly seeking out impregnation.” My daughter asked what I was laughing at, and I barely knew how to explain to her what was so funny about this whole thing. Manny Alvarez would $#!+ twice and die if he knew how long she had nursed.
That is crazy. My daughter has picked up many of her dolls and pretended to breastfeed them because she has seen me do it. Do I need to get her into therapy right away?