Pretending maternity

One of these days I was talking with some friends and one of them told us she was thinking about “adopting” a reborn baby so she could get some maternity experience and then decide if she wanted a real baby of her own or not… It seemed quite weird to me.

I never had heard about reborns before so I made a research and became quite surprised.

[Excerpts from msnbc]
Although most people want a reborn to collect them, “…some customers order special dolls that are exact replicas of their own children who died at birth or in infancy” …”others buy them as surrogates for children that were lost or have grown and left the home…” Is this a way to perpetuate time?
…“Some women dress the dolls, wash their hair, take them for walks in strollers and take them shopping.”
One woman even said “…she wanted a real baby, but was too busy to commit to caring for a real one. A reborn doll satisfies her maternal instincts … without all the carrying on and mess.”

Maybe I’m overreacting but only one word comes to my mind: creepy.

Here’s a video about reborn babies:


They are lovely, beautiful, cute babies but… they are fake.
They look pretty much with a real baby, they have the same size, same weight, some even simulate baby noises, heart beating and breathing but… they have no feelings, no needs, no emotions. They’re toys.

How can someone decide about maternity based on an experience with reborns? How can these fake babies take the place of a real son? What about commitment and affectivity?

On the other hand, some people defend that “…there are many ways a person may find to cope with loss, sadness and anxiety, and these reborn dolls offer one solution”.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. I must say that I have nothing against reborns. On the contrary, I think they are an absolutely amazing piece of art.

But somehow this subject made me feel uncomfortable and I really wanted to know other opinions…

Could be one step removed from cloning a child, lost child or with the advancements in AI over the next few years a complete robo-child or robo-pets. Nice way to desensitize people to the idea. Something like this could really kick the schools take home baby for the weekend up several notches.

This is creepy. I feel for the mothers who lost their children and buy a reborn that resembles the lost child, that can’t do well for their mental state, can it? Something just sounds off about that scenario. Some of the young people in my family no longer desire pets, their parents buy them electronic animal toys. Some are pretty real; they have fur, bark, meow, and move. I just hope these babies don’t replace real ones as rapidly as these toys are replacing real pets.

Both have advantages though, for example one family I speak of currently doesn’t have the money, time, or space for a real dog. So the toy dogs give their children a piece of something they can’t have.

But the attachment to these fake babies just doesn’t seem healthy to me, these women are not children with toys.

I find this idea completely insane. Babies are blessings, not hassles. They are lives which the parent(s) are responsible for and can watch grow and mature, and love. How can you love a non-living object? How can these women seriously think that these lifeless baby-replicas are even a fraction of the real beauty that is life?

I could just be weird, but I always thought that the idea of having a baby was not so you can care for it and raise it, having a child is a wonderful result of two people who are, hopefully, in love and express their love for each other in the most intimate of ways. These women made it seem as if the only reason to have a baby is because it would 'fit' their schedules or something; as if babies are owned by their mothers! Children are not a convenience, they are the most wonderful part of life: procreation. Why anyone would rather have a fake baby over the real thing competely dumbfounds me!

I think it's really creepy.

I guess I could see it being therapeutic in a way for parents who had lost a child, as long as the idea was to help them work through any guilt or whatever that they had.

But the idea that you can adopt a doll to see if you want a baby is just wierd to me.

I think it's symptomatic of how dissociated we've become from our physical selves: bodies are something we have, not something we are. We cut them and mold them and vacuum them out when they're not the shape we want. It's one more thing on the list of acquisitions that will supposedly make us content: the car, the house, the TV, ...

But we've lost the sense that what makes a person a person is the unity of body and mind/soul, and the unique pattern of each individual.

Being a human is about relating to other humans both physically and mentally, not owning a humanlike physical reproduction with no emotional needs.

Yech. Creepy.

thanks danamoon for putting my attention to this subject.
at first i was a bit confused by the title of the thread because i got the subject of pseudopregnancy or phantom pregnancy.

i guess we can look at this phenomenon from different point of views.

first of all i would like to look at it from the artistic view. it is very well done. i really admire the way the dolls look. i also appreciate in this time of a huge production of disposables the very affectionately and caring way the dolls are produced. so they are really worth the money.

from this point of view it is quiet understandable that people are attracted and start to collect such dolls. like people collect tin soldiors, paintings or what ever.
maybe it is embedded into the DNA of some people that they just love to do such things.

on the other hand there is the psychological aspect. i am yet not very sure what to think about it.
my first idea that came to my mind was, like the one of some in this thread: creepy and weird.
but than i started to think about it. creepy and weird, to my opinion, judges the women who adopted such a doll. the statements sound very resonable, nothing to worry about:

“I have a 2-year-old daughter. I don’t feel that way at all that it replaces her. It’s completely different having a real baby,”

source

if i think that this is creepy i just want the collectors to follow my point of view!
to my opinion nobody got the right to judge the behavior of other people as long as no harm occurs.

but lets take a closer look at these statements:

“It fills a spot in your heart,”

Walsh said her husband doesn’t think it strange that his wife plays with dolls. “He likes them too,” she said. “He says when he holds the baby it makes him feel good. It reminds him of the day his daughter was born. Everybody likes to hold a baby. It makes you feel at peace. It makes you feel calm.”

ome customers order special dolls that are exact replicas of their own children who died at birth or in infancy.

A reborn doll satisfies her maternal instincts, she said, without all the carrying on and mess.

Reborns, she said, “never grow out of their clothes, never soil them. It's just fabulous. The only difference, of course, is these guys don't move.”

source

in some ways this made me very very sad.
i guess those faked babys can be seen as a symbol, a symptom of our era. although we got more and more global contacts, the way to communicate with each other gets easier every day, but on the other hand the individual gets more and more lonely.
actually most people are sitting in front of their computer and communicate with each other. no more conferences but video conferences - nobody has to leave the room or travel to another city.
no meeting with friends but chatting in the evening.
no dates but inrternet dates and cyber sex.

but there is a strong desire in each human to touch and get touched, to socialize, to be amongst other humans not only virtually.

so these dolls and pet dolls aswell meet up a very human requirement.

so i am sad and sorry that this world has come to the point that natural human feelings and desiers are satisfied by artificial art.

A decade or so ago, on Australian tv, they showed a couple who'd paid several thousand dollars US for a lifelike baby doll. It had it's own, specially decorated room. A cot. Baby clothes. All the accoutriments.

The tv show showed the parents preparing to go out for the night. They'd hired a babysitter .. for their doll / baby !

When we saw it, we commented about 'those crazy Americans'.

We were under the impression that pseudo-babies must be reasonably common in the US, but comments in this thread indicate that maybe it's not all that common or well-known after all.

reply to post by Velvet Death


Now you remind me that movie A. I.. It was about a very realistic robot boy (with feelings!) that wanted to be a real boy so his “parents” would love him… I remember to feel sympathy for the boy. He/it was adorable.

David is 11 years old. He weighs 60 pounds. He is 4 feet, 6 inches tall. He has brown hair. His love is real. But he is not.

source

Who knows if in the future there’ll be such a thin line between real and unreal? Sad, but probably at that time we’ll also think in a different way.

Originally posted by danamoon

Who knows if in the future there’ll be such a thin line between real and unreal? Sad, but probably at that time we’ll also think in a different way.

the more i think of this subject, the more i figure out for myself what aspects are related to it.
and the more, somehow, i am scared by societey

not only that people, as i stated before, communicate by electronic means, they are living alone.
i searched the web a bit, because i got in mind that the numbers of single living citziens in cities increas year by year.
but i couldn.t find any specific or not the stuff i got in mind.

but there are interesting facts:

according to a survey of the US Census Bureau of 2007 the average household is about 2,61 people!
[1]

same survey claims that only 50.2 % of all us-citizens older than 15 years are married.
10.5 % are divorcesd and 30.8 % never married[2]

comparing to similar survey o2006 marriage has decreased of 0.2 % and never married increased of 0.3%[3]

it is only the change over one year, but i guess you can all see the tendency!
on the other hand, the number of single parent familis grows.

Over time, the number of single parent families living in the United States has grown. Between the years of 1970 and 1996, the number of children living in two parent homes decreased from 85 percent to 68 percent.

………

As single parent family statistics continue to rise, we can't help but wonder what the future holds for terms such as family and sanctity...

(emphasis by me) [4]

maybe something that makes it much more clear.
the netherlands is a very small country.
its population is only 16,440,113
in 2003 the number of dutch househoulds has been 7 million[5]

Substantial increase in the number of singles
Over half of the growth rate in the number of households is due to the increase in the number of singles. The group increased by 300 thousand since 1995, reaching 2.4 million households in 2003.

[6]
and the number is going to grow more:

One million singles more in 2030

The number of singles will increase from 2.4 million in 2003 to 3.4 million in 2030. The main causes for the increase are the breaking up of relationships and the aging of the population.

[7]

enough of statistics - i just wanted to show that in western culture family structures are breaking, people live as singles, sometimes with kids and sometimes without.
therefore there are certain gaps, gaps in emotions that have to be filled.
we live in times where everything seems to be possible. so why not filling these gaps with artificial family members
today babies, tomorrow according to steven spielberg with AI children and maybe in 100 years with AI spouses.
everything is possible.

number of underage pregnant girls increase [8] - maybe because they also want to fill that gap!
i have heard of programms where teenage girls get a fake baby who presents every reaction a natural baby would produce including waking up her "mother" during night time.
it should prevent teenage pregnancy as well as programms of staying virgin until marriage shall prevent them as well.

but statistics show that it doesn.t help.
because saying no or nursing a faked baby can.t fill the emotinal gaps.
neither will AI or an artificial spouse fill these gaps, these desires.

human is made for living together. in - i was close to say ancient times - but since the beginning of the industrialization at the end of the 19th century people lived in huge families. even unmarried aunts and uncles lived with the family. a number of children up to 13 or more wasn.t unsual since kids would have been best pension ever.
what did that mean for the individual.
an unmarried aunt didn.t have to crave for own children, she educated all children of her sister or brother as if they were her own.
grandmothers have been at hand all the time. and a girl would never not know how to deal with a baby. her mom would get a baby most every year until menopause. everything quiet natural. no mystery.

i really don.t want to say that these times have been better. they have been different. they got their advantages as they got their disatvantages (less medical improvement, child death, etc.)
and for myself i wouldn.t want to live in that times.
but i guess human was emotional a bit more happier than nowadays.

so it should be a task for future to help each other to fullfill our human desires, to care for each other, to invent the term of family newly!
a family doesn.t have to be a group of people who share the same genes. a family could be a group of people who love each other, who care for each other, who are connected to each other in deep frindship.

therefore i prefer the model of living in communities with the possibility of being individual.
jsuta vision for the future of a single mom of a 12 yo.



edit: links

[edit on 8-11-2008 by orange-light]

reply to post by orange-light


You make some excellent points, orange-light.

It reminds me of a study that I heard about a couple of years ago, measuring friendship and social connections among Americans. I'll have to try and remember where I saw it, or do some Googling, because it fits right in.

They asked questions about things like whether people had a friend who they would confide in with a serious health issue, and also stuff like whether people had a friend who could pick up their kid from school if they were unable to.

The results were really scary – so many people reported having absolutely no one in their lives who they could talk about serious issues with.

Let me spend some time on Google and I'll try to add in a link.

This reminded me of a documentary I seen recently on the subject of reborns. It was called "My Fake Baby", and it was on the BBC not too long ago, the rerun anyways. I believe it may not be replaying any time soon. On the BBC America website it doesn't show when the next scheduled showing of the documentary will take place. So, out of luck there I guess.

Dolls may seem to be just a children's plaything, but a closer look reveals much more. This documentary delves into a small niche of adult women who collect and care for shockingly life-like baby dolls that cost hundreds of dollars. Known as “reborns,” some of these dolls have beating hearts and others have tiny veins. They are treated like real babies – with walks in the park, cuddles and regular diaper changes. The documentary follows several women including one who travels to Washington D.C. to pick up the fifth addition to her family of life-like dolls

Source

When I watched this documentary, at times it was very hard for me to tell that the baby I was seeing (and knew was a fake) was actually fake, as the show was about just that. I had never heard of this whole subculture befor I seen the documentary, the whole thing was kind of weird and creepy for me. But, I somewhat understood what the women were getting out of it.

Here's some links to the reports of the study I mentioned above:
The Boston Globe
Duke media release
Softpedia

The study, published in the June issue of American Sociological Review, is based on the first nationally representative survey on this topic in 19 years.

It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. The survey found that both family and non-family confidants dropped, with the loss greatest in non-family connections.

Duke media release

The study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona provides powerful evidence for the argument that the country is becoming increasingly socially isolated even as cellphones, the Internet, and other technology make people more interconnected. The authors found that fully one-quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom to discuss their most important personal business.

The Boston Globe

The percentage of people who talk only to family members about important matters increased from about 57 percent to about 80 percent, while the number of people who depend totally on their spouse has increased from about 5 percent to about 9 percent.

Softpedia

What the reports mainly focus on is how this trend toward isolation is leaving people without a "safety net" – that while people are okay in isolation as long as everything is normal, this leaves them with no resources to fall back on if something (illness, economic hardship, act of nature) strikes.

They also talk about how this isolation may impact our involvement in local politics and community.

But I think this also shows what orange-light was talking about – the lack of physical connection between people that might be behind the urge to have a "reborn" baby.

I want to amend my first reaction to this story also – I agree that it is wrong to judge people for this, and while my first reaction is to cringe at the idea of fake babies, I think my real reaction is sadness and fear of the loneliness that I think might be behind people looking to inanimate objects to replace loved ones.

I can’t get rid of this subject! I am thinking about it on and on. So thanks to dingbat for the research.

Americans don't have as many close friends as they used to.

We're networking on myspace.com, sharing photos and text messaging on our cellphones, and blogging at all hours

[1]

This quote represents our life today, or lets better say the life of a certain group. Maybe some would claim that it is a “problem” of a people of a certain range of age – maybe from 15 to 40 or 50, I really don’t know. Maybe it is a “problem” of a certain level of education. Maybe people with higher education, higher income or of a certain age tend more to use the comfort of modern life.

Sometimes all these digital networks like myspace, facebook or even forums like this one are the only possible way for hard working people to communicate with other people than their coworkers!

A very good friend of mine works for a pharmaceutical company. She got a very responsible job. Not a job where she has to make major decisions, but dealing with governmental authorities. She starts working at 9am but usually she doesn’t leave the company before 9 or 10pm.
To late to meet friends. Sometimes to late to call friends. So she communicates via internet! In some way her only possibility.

Originally posted by americandingbat
They asked questions about things like whether people had a friend who they would confide in with a serious health issue, and also stuff like whether people had a friend who could pick up their kid from school if they were unable to.

The results were really scary – so many people reported having absolutely no one in their lives who they could talk about serious issues with.

Originally posted by americandingbat
What the reports mainly focus on is how this trend toward isolation is leaving people without a "safety net" – that while people are okay in isolation as long as everything is normal, this leaves them with no resources to fall back on if something (illness, economic hardship, act of nature) strikes.

The two quotes of americandingbats are symptomatically for our society.
I discussed this subject with another friend, a single mom of two. We both figured out that it represents somehow our own lives.

I by myself got plenty of friends. Really, even those friends I would call at 3am in the night to tell them that I would be dying soon. I got friends all over the world. I got friends in the mid of their 60s and I got friends about 18. It is not the problem that there is nobody to talk to. The problem is, that there is nobody around.

These days I am experiencing a huge loss in friendship. One of my best friends had to move to the states, since she is home schooling her kids, which is illegal in Germany. Another friend moved to UK to study at university. Great, more people in the world I can visit. But less people in Berlin to go out with! My best friend here in Berlin is so wrapped up in family issues that we haven’t seen each other for 6 months although she lives only 4 km from door to door.

So what to do?
I won’t consider to give up long-distance friends, no matter if they moved away or just became my friend because I am also socializing via internet.

We are all aware of the status quo. We are all aware of the tendencies of our global western society: more singles, less friends next door, more working hours, sometimes less money, family living in cities, towns on the other side of the country or even on a different continent.
The question is: what can we do? What do we want to do, to change society? To avoid the necessity of faked reborn babies, and to prevent things like AI?
Or what do we want to do, what can we do to make the world more human? To stop loneliness?

Any thoughts?

Originally posted by orange-light
This quote represents our life today, or lets better say the life of a certain group. Maybe some would claim that it is a “problem” of a people of a certain range of age – maybe from 15 to 40 or 50, I really don’t know. Maybe it is a “problem” of a certain level of education. Maybe people with higher education, higher income or of a certain age tend more to use the comfort of modern life.

Something I found surprising about the study I cited in my last post, was that loneliness and isolation actually decreased with rising socioeconomic and educational status. I would have expected that because people of higher economic classes tend to move more than the poor, it would be the opposite.

Sometimes all these digital networks like myspace, facebook or even forums like this one are the only possible way for hard working people to communicate with other people than their coworkers!

I wonder if this is why upper-middle and upper-class people actually reported more social contact than lower-class people. If so, it highlights the problem that you get to later in your post, that it's not people to talk to that are lacking in our lives, but people to be with.

The question is: what can we do? What do we want to do, to change society? To avoid the necessity of faked reborn babies, and to prevent things like AI?
Or what do we want to do, what can we do to make the world more human? To stop loneliness?

Any thoughts?

I agree with you that giving up long-distance and internet socializing is not the answer.

You mentioned in your first post here the idea of living in communities, which interested me. How do you imagine that working? Would there be economic cooperation or just social cooperation? And how would they form, how would people find a community to join?

I don't actually expect answers, I just think it might be interesting to bounce some ideas around

Originally posted by danamoon
One of these days I was talking with some friends and one of them told us she was thinking about “adopting” a reborn baby so she could get some maternity experience and then decide if she wanted a real baby of her own or not… It seemed quite weird to me.

She thinks a doll will help her decide? Why not babysit for someones toddler? Or better yet take a difficult teenager under her wing for 3 months? If the woman can't decide then the answer should be obvious; she doesn't really want a kid.

And using those dolls for grief is very very weird. Reminds me of the people that freeze-dry their dead pets. Course you can't do that with babies, because it would be illegal, and also without fur the freeze dried product would look really nasty.

I have seen female dogs go into false pregnancies, and they do collect toys and watch over them fanatically, they become quite obssesed. But one would think human females would react a bit differently, realizing that the toy is not real and restraining their instincts a bit.

[edit on 10-11-2008 by Sonya610]

did i ever mention how much i love this thread?

Originally posted by americandingbat
Something I found surprising about the study I cited in my last post, was that loneliness and isolation actually decreased with rising socioeconomic and educational status. I would have expected that because people of higher economic classes tend to move more than the poor, it would be the opposite.

That’s very interesting.
Maybe the feeling of people is different.

In Germany people don’t tend to move that much as people in America.
But even if you have to move because of your job, when being higher educated or due to your job a bit more wealthy than average you don’t have so much problems to socialize.
When moving to a new city you attend sports club, church and other social groups. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that you will find friends!

But usually you don’t have to find friend, you got online friends, you got long distance friends, you just need somebody for a shopping spree or to attend yoga class with you.

And it depends how you define a friend.
I guess higher educated people might define a friend as a person with whom they can talk about their deepest feelings, which can be perfectly realized on the phone. Lower social classes might just need somebody sharing their love for soccer. That’s what I am watching here in Germany.
Might be completely different in other countries, in other cities.

But if we presume that social contacts in neighborhoods are decreasing, than a guy who just needs somebody for the soccer turf suffers more than somebody who needs somebody to talk to.

I wonder if this is why upper-middle and upper-class people actually reported more social contact than lower-class people. If so, it highlights the problem that you get to later in your post, that it‘s not people to talk to that are lacking in our lives, but people to be with.

See above dingbat.
Upper-middle and upper-class people regard online contacts, phone contacts as social contacts. And it might also be easier to travel a bit more than the poor.

I got a good and wonderful friend in Northern Germany, she lives about 155 miles/250 km away from my city. A 4 hours trip. She told me if the distance would be only 60 miles / 100 km we would see each other once a month. Although it still would be a long distance friendship.

If one of us would earn a bit more money, than this trip would be - no matter how far she would live away, possible once a month.

Germany is a small county. Each city is just 1 hour by plane away from my place. And i tell you, if i could afford I would visit one of my long distance friends once a month by plane.
Than I wouldn’t care whether they live north, east, south or west of me!

And all my long distance friends are internet buddies. We have been buddies than we became friends.

I agree with you that giving up long-distance and internet socializing is not the answer.

great
and long-distance and web socializing is also a good way not to feel lonely or too lonely

You mentioned in your first post here the idea of living in communities, which interested me. How do you imagine that working? Would there be economic cooperation or just social cooperation? And how would they form, how would people find a community to join?

I don‘t actually expect answers, I just think it might be interesting to bounce some ideas around

I can’t and don’t want to give you a working answer, I am also very interested in what other people think about this subject.
I think it would always depend on the people or community.
To me, but this is just an idea which might work for my very person:
Ideal situation would be to rent or by a very large house.
Each person, single family has their own areas. So I would get a room my son would get a room. We share a bath.
This is our own. We arrange it the way we love it. Our space to retire. To meet personal friends etc.
Own bathroom is necessary because people develop their own ideas about hygienic etc. and i really don.t want to be in the bath tube when somebody else might want to use it.

But then there will be common rooms. Living room(s), kitchen.
You can meet your community fellows there.
If you want to establish a economic cooperation depends on the people. I wouldn’t advice it because usually these are issues people use to argue about and most times split.
A nice solid social cooperation would be fine.
Should be a mixture of elder and younger people.
Like an extended family in former times. Singel moms and dads can baby sit their kids vice versus and have a chance to find a partner again.
Younger people can participate from experiences of older ones.

It is just a dream, but maybe worth while.

My dad died this June, and since then my mom is living alone in a big house in my hometown 340 miles/540 km away from my city. She doesn’t want to give it up, but she lives there on her own, alone, but I guess yet not lonely.
In my dream she would be intergrated in such a community, and would be delighted to live with people of her age, people of my age and her grandchildren or children in the age of her grandchildren.

dingbat I hope you realize all the butterflies and bees humming around, see the sunshine in the garden and got imagines of running kids and playing dogs in the meadow

Originally posted by Sonya610
She thinks a doll will help her decide? Why not babysit for someones toddler? Or better yet take a difficult teenager under her wing for 3 months? If the woman can‘t decide then the answer should be obvious; she doesn‘t really want a kid.

Maybe she doesn’t have the possibility to baby sit toddlers or care for a teenager!
Why is the answer so obvious if she can’t decide.

Even women are mixed up in jobs and life that sometimes they just don’t know if they want kids or if it is the right time.
But then there is this strange thing called biological clock.

A man can have kids even with 70 or 80 – I don’t want to judge whether this is appropriate or not.
But a woman can only become a grandma at that age.

I have seen female dogs go into false pregnancies, and they do collect toys and watch over them fanatically, they become quite obssesed. But one would think human females would react a bit differently, realizing that the toy is not real and restraining their instincts a bit.

I know that female dogs having been in heat and not mated develop symptoms of phantom pregnancy and adopting toys as babies.

The caregiver may notice physical and emotional changes, particularly 8-9 weeks after her last season. She may exhibit a change in preferred diet to blander food, fluid retention, and a wish not to take her usual amount of exercise, and she may hoard toys and treat them as puppies. There may be restlessness, lack of appetite, panting, trembling, whining and nest-building at the time she would have given birth. There may be a degree of aggression to perceived threats. She will usually return to normal after 2-3 weeks, 48hrs after the birth would have occurred.

[1]

But I guess the problem of phantom pregnancy with humans is a bit more complex.
Usually we don’t expect getting pregnant after mating, most women even try to avoid it.

A woman with phantom pregnancy exhibits all or most of the usual pregnancy signs and symptoms. These would include lethargy, nausea and vomiting, breast engorgement, increasing abdominal size and of-course absence of menstrual periods.

[2]

So I don’t think that a woman suffering of a phantom pregnancy would be happy with a faked baby, or that she has to restrain their instincts a bit. They need desperately psychological help, and I am not sure if they really can manage it on their own without help.

Nobody knows for sure what causes phantom pregnancy. However, one thing binds sufferers together: The extreme desire to bear a child.

True phantom pregnancy is thought to have a deep psychological basis, strong enough to bring about the hormonal changes which cause the display of the physical features such as absence of periods, breast engorgement and abdominal swelling which is merely gaseous distension of the bowel.

[3]

According to the quoted statements a woman suffering of false pregnancy wouldn’t buy a toy doll. In her opinion it wouldn’t be necessary. She is pregnant, she will get a real baby.

Maybe false pregnancy somehow is linked to knowledge.
The percentage of women suffering decreased.

The rate of pseudocyesis in the United States has declined significantly in the past century. In the 1940s there was one occurrence for approximately every 250 pregnancies. This rate has since dropped to between one and six occurrences for every 22,000 births (www.womens-health.co.uk...). The average age of the affected woman is 33, though cases have been reported for women as young as 6-1/2 and as old as 79. More than two-thirds of women who experience pseudocyesis are married, and about one-third have been pregnant at least once. Women who have been victims of incest may be at greater risk for developing pseudocyesis.

[4]

It seems to be very difficutl to convince a woman thinking being pregnant, developing all symptoms of being prenant, besides the fact that there isn’t a fetus in her uterus.
--> 2

edit links

[edit on 10-11-2008 by orange-light]

part 2

Because pseudocyesis is not known to have a direct underlying physical cause, there are no general recommendations regarding treatment with medications. In some cases, however, the patient may be given medications for such symptoms as the cessation of menstruation. Because most patients with pseudocyesis have underlying psychological problems, they should be referred to a psychotherapist for the treatment of these problems. It is important at the same time, however, for the treating professional not to minimize the reality of the patient‘s physical symptoms. The treatment that has had the most success is demonstrating to the patient that she is not really pregnant by the use of ultrasound or other imaging techniques. There have been reports of patients being cured of pseudocyesis by hypnosis, purgatives, massage, opioids, or after nine months of symptoms, by experiencing „hysterical childbirth,“ but there are few data available on the effectiveness of these or similar procedures.

[5]

I guess it would be very difficutl just to handle this “problem” with mere will power.
And on the other hand couples want to get pregnant by all means, and yet it isn’t possible.

I could see a family having a replica made of a child they lost and keeping it on display, to remember the child. People display pictures of their dead infants in their homes as a remembrance. I've known people who had photos taken of their stillborn baby and had the photos displayed. I think it helps parents to deal with the loss and to not forget the child.

But to try to replace a baby, hmmm... that seems a little off. But, who am I to say?

dingbat/orange
You have raised some points that are undoubted a symptom of our evolved society. Ever more people live their own lives and friendship has become supported in new technologies. This is true and sad in the limit, but technology is also a great way to reach people that are far from us. Definitely, depends on us to do some effort to change it.

But should a reborn fill this kind of lack? I don’t think fake babies would take the place of friendship, but in a certain way, reborns can represent the difference between being alone and being lonely.

People transform in apparent life what doesn’t have life and they develop love for something that doesn’t have feelings at all. Do people live in such a lonely existence that could justify this? Apparently… I think these fake babies allow a fantasy for grown people. By given them names, dressing and decorating their bedrooms, people distract themselves and simulate the existence of a live within family.

The fact is that relationships demand too much commitment and some people have a strange way to fulfil their human desires.

(orange, I'm sorry about your dad...)


[edit on 11-11-2008 by danamoon]

I own a few reborn dolls and I have made a few of them to give as gifts as well. To some people they seem creepy but to others they are just precious dolls to love. It's a little silly, actually, because 'grown-ups' aren't supposed to play with dolls. I think the reborn doll thing is an excuse for me to get to play with dolls even though I'm an adult, and my daughter can't destroy them because she's not allowed to even touch them. (They are worth a lot of money).

Sometimes I will put the dolls into strollers and my daughter and I will take them for a walk around the neighborhood. It is fun because everyone who sees us thinks we are walking with real babies. And it is great recreation with my daughter.

The husband can't comment on the expense because as long as I make a few of them to sell every now and then, I will break even.

They are very realistic and in a way these dolls allow me to re-experience some of the maternal feelings I had about my children when they were newborns. I am making one doll which will look exactly like my daughter when she was a baby. It is kind of like looking at a favorite photo and reminiscing about how adorable she was, only it will be a 3D sculptural rendition of her instead. I have the kit to make the doll of my son but I haven't started his yet. The doll for his look-alike has open eyes and those are much harder to make; I am too intimidated by the process to start yet.