A Rant about Baby Dolls
This is a rant about baby dolls and why you should thing twice about giving them to children.
I can see the logic historically. Girls were going to get married, very young, probably to much older men and were going to be having babies until they died or hit menopause. Older siblings would have real babies to learn with (their siblings) but the youngest, if female, would need a substitute. Enter the baby doll.
The usefulness of the baby doll likely continued as long as society deemed that the ultimate role of the female offspring was as a receptacle for semen and breeder of children. Get the girl used to the idea of having a baby because that's what she's destined to do as her life's work. Families had fewer children and girls had fewer siblings to raise so the baby doll became a fashionable proxy.
Enter the modern era. Teen pregnancy in America is obscenely high for a first world country. Girls are throwing away chances for education and a good career/job by having babies. Why? Well I'd like to point you at the baby doll. It's made of silicon, feels like real skin. It cries for attention, food, diaper changing. It drinks, it eats, and it needs it's diaper changed. The ads ooh and aah over every 'lifelike' feature and parents buy them for their little girls. And the girls get to play at being mommy to a doll that won't cry if they don't want it to, doesn't get into trouble on it's own, won't suffocate if it gets buried in the bedding, and won't starve if neglected for days. Babies are cute and fun and not that much trouble. At least that's what little girls 'learn' from these dolls.
Add in parents on the go and perhaps the lack of older siblings that show any love for the child and you end up with a girl that sees a baby as someone that will love her, and be as cute and trouble free as her baby doll. Her boyfriend loves her, he says so, especially when they have sex. A baby would make her life perfect and would be no trouble....
But what do I know, I've just seen young women drop out of high school to have babies that their boyfriends abandon right along with them. I see them working in the 7-11 or bagging groceries. I see a few that manage to stay baby-free and get into colleges only to drop out when they get pregnant or flunk out when they become obsessed with having a baby.
Is the baby doll the cause of all this? Of course not. But why add to the multitude of other reasons by encouraging little girls to see babies as dolls?