Bye Bye Baby Doll
It's the week before Christmas and a confused mother contemplates the wall of dolls at the local toystore. Her five-year-old daughter is desperate for one of these dolls, but which one? Baby Trike & Go? Baby Crawl & Walk? Baby Slurp & Burp? Is Baby Tumbles Surprise the one that does the splits, or is that Star Gymnast Jamie?
Her daughter wants a doll that eats - would she prefer Baby All-Gone, Baby Alive, or McDonald's Happy Meal Baby? And what about Amazing Amy? This doll can do it all, but the price tag is steep - $79 retail. It's enough to make a mother weep into her holiday sale circular. Where have all the baby dolls gone? The plain vinyl dolls that didn't talk, burp, crawl, roller-skate, push a stroller or come with a liquid crystal display embedded in their chests. Maybe that's not a bad thing. If children prefer these dolls to more conventional playthings, what's wrong with that? After all, children are supposed to play with dolls. Does it really matter what kinds of dolls they play with? According to many parents, caregivers, parenting experts and toy manufacturers, it does matter. These performing dolls do not sit well with everyone. The problem with these types of dolls, say critics, is that they promote a passive play experience and discourage the child from using her imagination. The child does not play WITH the doll, the doll performs FOR the child. What to Expect the Toddler Years, the modern bible of child-rearing, warns parents to "look for versatility. Toys should offer a variety of play possibilities rather than a variety of elaborate features." The book further encourages parents to allow the child to play with toys in his or her own way, "even if it's not the way the designers of the toy had in mind." And indeed, this is what many children do. Brigitte Thompson, a home daycare provider and author of the book The Complete Home Daycare Record Keeping System_, purchased some walking dolls and a roller skating doll for her daycare. "The kids thought they were great, turned them on, watched for a minute and then went on to something else," she says. "They did not interact with the dolls at all." When the batteries for these dolls wore out, Thompson opted not to replace them. To her surprise, "The kids then began to play with these dolls, dress them up, hold them like babies, and interact again. It was amazing!" Tammy Wilson, another home daycare provider, shares Thompson's experience. "Once the newness of it (the doll) wore off, (it) was just like any other baby," she says. Unlike any other baby doll, however, these battery-operated dolls cost between $20 - $40. A simple, vinyl baby doll available at the Toys 'R Us in Newport News, VA is a mere $10, and that includes a carrying basket and four outfits. Some dolls don't even have enough versatility to be treated as a conventional doll. Star Gymnast Jamie is a doll that flips over a tiny plastic bar and does the splits. That's all she does, in fact all she can do, because her arms and legs are permanently molded into a specific position to allow her to perform that feat. Jamie is a one-trick pony. You can't even take Jamie to bed with you, because her hard plastic body is no comfort to cuddle. Kathy Guajardo, a mother and daycare provider in Michigan, knows how important the cuddling feature is. "When I was little I had both a Baby Alive doll and Baby Tippy Toes. I remember playing with them for a little bit, but then soon casting them aside because they weren't "cuddly", definitely not "life-like". The Tippy Toes doll was made out of hard plastic, and her legs and arms didn't bend at all. I try to avoid buying these types of dolls for my daughter." But if battery-operated dolls aren't lifelike enough, Playmates Toys' Amazing Amy, is perhaps too lifelike. Amazing Amy is essentially a giga-pet surrounded by a doll body. Amy tells you when she needs to be fed, or changed, or wants to be played with. "I just know!" is Amy's commercial tagline. A liquid crystal display embedded in Amy's chest rates her owner's parental performance with a number of hearts. The quicker the child responds to Amy's needs, the more hearts she gets. Amy can be programmed to go to sleep, and when she is sleeping she will not play again until her programmed waking time. In Amy's commercial, the girls who are playing with her are excited and eager to do her bidding. But how would real little girls in Amy's target market ( 5-8 year olds) will respond to such a demanding doll? What if the child wants to play when Amy is sleeping? What if the child wants to feed Amy when she isn't hungry? What if the child wants to name her doll something other than Amy? The Toy Manufacturers of America, a trade organization, says that a good toy is one that "enhance(s) problem-solving abilities and a child's emotional well-being, feelings of success and self esteem." How are these goals accomplished by a doll that makes demands of its owner, and controls the direction of play? So much of a child's life is controlled by her parents. It's the parents who decide what clothes to buy, what food to serve, where to live, and any number of small day-to-day decisions. A child's toys are perhaps the only things entirely under her control. They come to life at her command, say her words, and forgivingly take whatever punishment she visits upon them. Amazing Amy usurps that power. It forces the child to accommodate her play to satisfy its programming. So if Amazing Amy goes too far (and is too expensive at $60-79 retail), and if battery-operated dolls soon lose their novelty and are treated like ordinary dolls, why don't parents just buy the ordinary dolls in the first place? Parents don't buy ordinary dolls because the children don't ask for them, and the children don't ask for them because they don't see any fast-paced, glossy commercials for them. These commercials are targeted directly at the children, not at parents, because manufacturers know that parents will usually buy what their children say they want. As Anne Cassidy says in her book Parents Who Think Too Much. "Toy fads sweep through kids' lives with regrettable regularity." If automated dolls in general were the fad, it would not be such a concern, but it is only the type of automated doll that wanes in popularity, not the genre itself. The Toy Manufacturer's of America compiles an annual list of the top selling toys in America. On the list of the fifteen best-selling toys introduced in 1998, TEN of these toys were performance toys, requiring batteries or programming. Amazing Amy ranked fifth, and surrounding her were Talking Teletubbies (#1), Furby, Sing-Along Blue, Cabbage Patch Kids' Baby Babbles, Walk & Talk Sesame Street characters, Bounce-Around Tigger, Smoochie Poochie, and something called Chuck, My Talkin' Truck. The venerable Barbie, so often criticized as a limiting plaything herself, was the only non-automated doll to make the list. So what's a mother to do? She could follow the example of Amie Choiniere, owner of School Street Childcare in Vermont. Choiniere is proud to say that she " ha(s) never and will never buy" a performing doll or toy. "I take pride and joy in watching the children in my care use their imaginations when playing," says Choiniere, " it's what being a child is all about!" Not many parents have the stamina to endure a child's repeated clamoring for a special doll, however. The parental urge to give children what they want is strong. Desire fueled by commercialism and peer pressure is not, however, a genuine want. Children want to use their imaginations. They want to create worlds in which they wield the power. They want to practice the roles they will play as adults. Parents need to show them how to do this - and to do it without the help of a battery-operated or computer-programmed doll. After all, a doll that appears to do nothing can actually do anything - anything a child can imagine.
Barbara Thomas is a work-at-home-mom to Natalie, age 3, and the owner of The Professional Pen, Business Writing Services. She specializes in media writing for small and home-based businesses.
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Bye Bye Baby DollFriday, 09 January 2009 Bye Bye Baby Doll It's the week before Christmas and a confused mother contemplates the wall of dolls at the local toystore. Her...
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