Animatronic baby dolls that coo and chortle when their sensors detect motion nearby often startle me when I wend my way through the toy department in Wal-Mart or Target. These “lifelike” dolls strike me as creepy and I scoot into the Barbie aisle as quickly as I can with maniacal laughter echoing in my wake. When I was a girl, my neighbor across the street had one of the first “Baby Alive” dolls, but I thought a doll that “’eats’ and ‘poops’ just like a real baby!” was just gross. Today there are a number of potty training dolls on the market but the arrival of educational toy manufacturer Berjuan’s Breast Milk Baby has sparked controversy among American parents because the doll encourages children to imagine breast-feeding rather than bottle-feeding their babies.
Indeed, Berjuan created the doll, which has been a best seller for several years in Europe, to promote breast-feeding. Supporters point out that the bottles typically supplied with baby dolls are not neutral but actually teach children that bottle-feeding is the norm despite the fact that breast-feeding is much healthier for infants. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2010 “Breastfeeding Report Card” notes that "3 out of every 4 new mothers in the United States now start out breastfeeding.” Unfortunately, “rates of breastfeeding at 3 and 6 months remain stagnant and low.” The report finds that the majority of mothers want to breast feed but still face multiple barriers such as stigmas or prohibitions against breastfeeding in public or in the workplace. Hopefully, the puritanical attitudes that class the subject of breast-feeding in the realm of sexual taboo will fade long before today’s six-year-old dolly mamas grow up and have their own infants. Thus the Breast Milk Baby is an educational toy with lessons for adults as well as children.
Here is a link to the European version of the commercial for “The Breast Milk Baby.” FYI it includes scenes of a real infant nursing which probably won’t appear on TV in the U.S.
Berjuan’s website currently offers six different models of The Breast Milk Baby for $89 a piece. I was pleased to see Jeremiah and Jessica, two black dolls, included in the line-up. Re-sellers on Amazon.com have already marked the price up to $118 and warn that they won’t have any dolls to ship until November 2011 so place your order now if someone on your list wants one for Christmas!
À Bientôt
By offering too much information, this doll leaves zero room for a young girl to utilize her imagination.
ReplyDeleteIs it really necessary for a child to mimic the act of breast-feeding?
dbg
This makes me confused. I need to sit and have a think!!
ReplyDeleteI guess if you wanted to teach your child about breast feeding, you can toss out the bottle that came with the average doll and TEACH her. Or maybe she'll see you nurse her younger sibling. Let's just hope she doesn't take off her top in school!
But um, couldn't you just take a cheap doll and hold it up to your breast? Do you need to pay $100 for a nursing bra?
LOL @ Dani.
ReplyDeletedbg
We in the US are so much more uptight about things like this than other countries. A couple of weeks ago in GA, there was a major protest by nursing moms, because this one particular county had passed a law saying that it was illegal for a woman to nurse in public if her child was a certain age. She would be fined and or arrested. Hundreds of nursing moms went and nursed their kids around the clock. The law was rescinded. There are two ways to feed a baby, bottle and breast feeding. I guess this doll was made to help promote, from an early age, that breast feeding is very natural. There is nothing vulgar or shameful about it. For the parents who want to teach their kids that information, why shouldn't they have a doll available to them. For the parents who don't like the idea, they are not going to buy the doll. How many of us have spent $100 on a doll that doesn't do anything but look pretty. At least this doll has some action and makes noise. I always hated when my mom would try to get me the fake version of the doll I really wanted. I think she tried that nonsense with my Cabbage Patch doll. Hated it! By the way, I LOVED my Baby Alive. Wasn't there some controversy about that doll, too? There will always be controversy. Makes for great sales!
ReplyDeleteOops, I thought of something else to say. Isn't the main reason woman have breast is for nursing? So when do we teach our young girls about breastfeeding? Is it taught in the Sex Education classes at school? Do they even have that in school anymore? Or do we just wait until a woman is pregnant and then try to convince her about the importance of breastfeeding? There is something strange going on in this country with the incredible rise of autism cases. I don't know enough about it to make any suggestions as to why there is a rise, but we should all be alarmed. I am not trying to tie autism in with breastfeeding either, because I haven't studied that. I do think that our little girls and little boys need to understand the real purpose of breasts. Maybe the boys would look at them a little different, if they knew they are here first and foremost to provide nourishment to our young.
ReplyDeleteMy computer is loading too slowly to access the breastmilk website; I will check again tomorrow on a high speed computer. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteDear All,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. Baby Alive came out when I was about 10 so maybe I was a little too old to appreciate her. I didn't think she was gross because she eliminated, I thought about how gross it would be to have to give the doll the equivalent of a colonic irrigation to keep crud from building up inside.
I didn't know about the "nurse-in" Vanessa mentions but this is a good example of how social attitudes discourage new mothers from feeding their infants in the most natural and healthy way.
I think $100 is a lot to pay for a baby doll and I have never cared much for baby dolls but if I had $100 to burn, I might buy Jeremiah or Jessica because I think these dolls will become highly collectible.
I can attest to limbe dolls dislike of lifelike baby dolls. She was very reluctant to even hold a reborn doll I had been cuddling, for what seemed like hours, at the Atlanta Doll Show. I thought for sure once she had that precious little gift in her hands, she would fall in love. Boy was I wrong! This total look of disgust washed over her face, and the baby looked petrified. It was so funny. I rescued them both by separating them almost immediately.
ReplyDeleteAt 10 you were thinking about colonic irrigations? You are right, you were too old for that doll, in more ways than one. LOL!
ReplyDeleteI posted this on Reddit. When I looked for groups interested in "dolls" by far the biggest group was "reddit/creepy". :)
ReplyDeleteWhile I wouldn't lobby against public breast-feeding, I would prefer that it was not done in public. It's a natural function, but one I would happily miss seeing. A few years ago, I was at a PUBLIC library. Free computer area. Three seats faced three computers. I "lucked out" by being between a breast-feeding young mother on my right and a young man masturbating himself on my left. Never have I tried to focus forward so intently.
ReplyDeleteWhen she was a child, my youngest sister LOVED Baby Alive. She loved that the doll pooped. Today, she "plays with" Sims and actually PAYS to send pixels to the bathroom. Sigh. And she thinks doll collecting is weird, lol.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Limbe Dolls dislike of lifelike baby dolls - I've heard people say that they do not like lifelike babies ... there's something eerie and scary about them.
ReplyDeleteMy other sister dislikes the two lifelike cats that my Mom has. My sister loves cats, but the robot cats, creep her out.
Hi D7ana,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. At least the weirdos in the library didn't touch you. One day I was reading in the African American literature reserve room in the central branch of the Washington, D.C. public library when I suddenly noticed that the guy on the other side of the table was putting his feet on mine!