Psychology related to dolls

I am fine with people saying they hate children, but I feel the same way about "stinky stupid little thing" as you feel about "did your friend's degree come from a cornflake box", if that makes sense.

 

I was finding it odd. I thought I was the only girl that didn't want a little kid. All my friends talk about their future and babies always come up. DX I dislike them...a lot. It makes me mad that everyone keeps insisting I should have kids just because I'm a girl. And it's not about my kid touching my doll... It's just that...a doll is something you have complete control over. It's something you can make your own and change as much as you like. Heck, you can even sell them. xD But a child is something different.

You can control them only to a certain extent and no matter how well you raised them, sometimes they just turn out bad. And I don't have the kind of love in me that a mother has. I mean, if someone does someething I don't like, I tell them so and if they don't stop, I just stop associating with them. I think mothers kind of have to love their kids no matter what and I don't feel I could do that. If I had a kid (God let's hope not) then I don't think I could keep loving them.

Besides, babies are too much work. DX My mom said she left me alone for five minutes and when she came back, I had my head stuck in a window and was choking. I don't have the kind of time or patience to worry about someone that much. I have a carrier to think about, though I haven't started it yet and I'm only seventeen... Babies are soooo not for me.

The way I see it, if women are allowed to squeal over babies, call them cute, and tell *everyone* about how excited they are, why aren't women also allowed to hate babies? I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but it's hard not to express how much you dislike something.

 

Right, right. True. Definitly, Oh yes... *in answer to everyone's posts* I do agree that not ALL doll owners see dolls as a sustitute for having children, and not all owners want control over something either. Having a doll simply for the pleaure is what the vast majority of owners seem to pertain to (please forgive my bad grammer) and that's just fine. I've owned toys all my life and never treated them like my children or acted as their creator. I'm not terribly social so having something to talk to is nice, even if it dosen't talk back, and seeing something so real looking is a pleasant peace of mind for me. Personally though, to each his or her own I say!

 

It's a knee jerk reaction I possess because when you reach my age, whenever you say you do not want children, you are inevitably met with the response "Your biological clock should start kicking in any time now" like my own evaluation of myself and who I am is wrong and of course, I'll wake up soon and suddenly have the burning need to invite a parasite to live in my body and destroy my life? A lot of women resent the assumption that all they are are babymakers when their lives have different goals and focuses.

I do not want children, have never wanted children, and am quite certain I will never, ever want to have children. I feel no need to pass my genes on and find mothering to be a rather joyless activity. I have a large family who have already spawned many times, so if I ever feel the need to play with a kid, one over the age of 4 and who is properly trained, I can go hang out with one of them and drop them back off when they get annoying.

As for dolls versus children, there is a rather famous poem by William Butler Yeats called the Dolls. Fits this topic rather well.

 

As I said, women ARE allowed to hate babies...there is absolutely nothing wrong with that whatsoever. To be honest, I don't care much for children either, even though I have one, mostly because there are too many not raised to behave. But that is beside the point. I simply find it hurtful to be told that since I am a mother I am constantly carrying around a whining, screaming, stinking, puking, destructive ball of annoying chaos....none of that is true. There's nothing at all wrong with "I hate babies", "Babies aren't for me", "Dolls are better for me than children", "I never want children", "kids annoy me", etc etc, but there's no reason to be insulting, you know?

I wasn't trying to go off topic or derail the thread, I was just asking for a little bit of civility is all.

 

For me, since i prefer male dolls over female ones, BJDs are the incarnations of the ideal man not as children. I also think it's sort of like a God complex too. I like to have controle and the escape.

When I'm not hanging around my friends I can hang out with my doll instead.

I'm also one of those horid folks that don't want to have children or wed. I can't imagine myself loving someone unconditionally. My biggest fear is being married to a guy I don't even like and having a ton of kids and feeling stuck. I much rather have dolls that I can make whatever I want. I'm just that shallow.

 

Ok granted I didn't read all of this thread, but I feel the need to comment on the original post anyway...sooo...I really don't think it's got anything to do with a nurturing instinct or my wanting children because frankly, if I went around de-capitating, popping the eyes out of their sockets and tearing the hair off of a child, I sincerely hope someone would lock me up.

Sure I refer to them as my kids, but bottom line, they are lumps of resin that enjoy playing with. I've got a fascination with toys of all kinds so, as someone else said, for me, it's more about the freedom to play and do whatever I like FAR more than it's ever going to be about my wanting something to nurture.

If I wanted something to mother, I'd get a puppy.

 

Interesting...maybe true for some people, but not for me. I like these dolls as another artistic outlet; paper's kind of tough to use when you want to see your creation in 3 dimensions. I may fit into the "god-complex" category over the "maternal instincts" one, since I enjoy the fact that I can choose what a doll looks like, what he'll wear, etc. Idealization at its finest. That, and I really don't deal well with children. They get under my skin far too quickly for me to ever want to have any of my own.

And I totally agree with this; whenever this sort of topic comes up, my dad will insist that "pregnancy is a wonderful thing" and that I'll eventually want children. I couldn't disagree more. If I have to be a mother, I won't have time for what I really want to do with my life. I don't think my control-freak personality would allow anyone else to take care of the kid while I worked, either. To me, kids are sometimes cute, and I admire Moms, but I'm not cut out for the position, and I find children, well, inconvenient.

 

My husband (who is not a psychologist, by the way ^_~) thinks that dolls will help stave off my biological clock for a few more years, which makes him happy. I'm not sure how accurate it is, though; even before the doll, I knew I didn't want kids for about 5 more years!

 

Deffinately sounds like Freudian psychology, which is a rather outmodelled approach...

You should tell your friend that rather than wasting his time theorizing on our maternal instincts or lackthereof, he should study how doll companies foster loyalty amoung their consumers. THAT'S a far more interesting study.

Or how we place our societal expectations onto dolls. IE, I've seen quite a few threads saying "I have a girl doll of this height, what boy dolls are there that are taller than her?" They're dolls- is there any real reason why the boy would HAVE to be taller, other than that, that is how we as a society expect the male-female height relationship to go? Or perhaps the difference between a typical male-male doll relationship and actual human male-male relationships. Or even the way ethnicity is, or isn't, represented by BJDs. You could write an entire paper on the way people in the doll fandom use terminology. IE, someone in the doll fandom saying 'That wig was expensive, but my doll just HAD to have it" may sound insane to someone outside the fandom, but within the fandom its known they're not really saying their doll was the one wanting it- it's shorthand for 'It was pricey, but it was something that I really wanted for my doll's character.'

And I will repeat again, my dolls are not my children. I didn't go to the hospital and squat out 7 pounds of Chiwoo. :P

ETA: Looking back on it, my response was kinda hostile. Sorry. I was on hold with my cable company when I wrote it, if that explains it.

I was just kinda disappointed that there are so many interesting psychological things to say about dolls, but... whether the owners have a 'mommy complex' isn't one of them. And I have a personal beef with the anti-feminist nature of Freudian psychology. (Which, taken to its logical end, would say all us ladies want boy dolls because we long to own something with a weiner.)

 

I was surprised at first to see all the "I hate children" posts....

Then I remember my six-year-old son who feels the same way...

Children are always jealous of other children.

Raven

 

I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, Raven, but your post comes across as saying those of us who dislike children are 'children' and feel that way because we're somehow jealous. That's not a logical assumption in the least. And unfortunately, hints towards the kind of attitude a lot of us who don't want children find to be the extreme irritatitant- the idea that one day we'll 'grow up' and realize that we were wrong.

Having a child requires a functioning pair of certain organs, not necessarily maturity, and I'm not sure why society has come to equate the two...

But I don't want to continue this line of thought because it's extremely off-topic. Just pointing out that your post could be taken in the wrong way.

 

Hey now, that's a little bit unfair, don't you think? Calling ANYONE who dosen't like children childish? I really dislike children and the idea of having them. But i would never tell anyone else not to have any, or that there was anything wrong with wanting them. I'm rather glad my parents had kids. I'm really glad that there are people out there who love kids and really enjoy raising them, and i just happen to not be one of them.


uhh... i get the feeling this thread is like, several hours away from being locked.
Can't we all just play nice? there's nothing wrong with disliking children (as long as you aren't mean to them) and there's nothing wrong with loving kids and having them, either.

 

Indeed... it's gotten quite off-subject, dolls are dolls and kids are kids.... I personally don't like getting too into the thought of how the rest of the world tries to put the two together

 

xDDDDD

I dunno, I think of Chrno as more like my best friend than my child. Though I guess it depends.

 

[laughs] Gee. Thanks.

If I didn't know you, Raven, it would very, very easy to take that as a violation of this site's Personal Attack rules. Essentially calling most of the participants in a given thread childish (or even child-like) based on their personal choices against reproduction could be seen as pretty insulting.

That aside, it is interesting to see how many of us in the community are, or plan to be, child-free by choice. It might be an interesting thing for some enterprising Social Psychology student to look into... What is it about these dolls in particular that draw people not interested in biological reproduction? Are our demographics really different from, say, fashion doll collectors? What role do generational expectations play? (Most of the people here are younger than we are. That may well have something to do with differing life expectations.) All good questions...

But I don't think those of us who choose not to have children necessarily do so because we refuse to grow up ourselves. You don't *have* to have children to be an adult.

 

XD I'm childfree and *everyone* mentions the Mummy thing in regards to my dolls, (or "daughters" as they often claim :/) I don't plan on having kids, but if dolly obsession is related to wishful parenthood, I sort of agree - but only because I'd *much* rather have a doll than a baby. Because I'm temperamental and forget about my dolls sometimes, and leave them on the shelf, and that's ok because it's a doll. And they don't cry or squeal or talk back when they become teenagers [most of the time...]

xxSam

 

I would laugh long and loud at anyone trying to tell me I have dolls because I "want to become a mother". I have two daughters aged 12 and 14, and I'm 5 months pregnant with daughter number 3. "Want to become a mother"? Darling, I am a mother.

Very telling that the psychologist trying to analyse doll collectors is a man, I think. Someone ought to point out to him that Freudian theory was thrown out the window in serious psychological practice over thirty years ago.