A few years later somebody, somewhere, thought to interview "normal" people, and they discovered that, lo and behold, people with healthy and whole personalities also had often slept with their parents as infants and toddlers. IN fact, they discovered that more parents let their little children snuggle up in bed with them than didn't- but most parents hadn't seen fit to mention this to their doctors since the practice was so frowned upon. Good for them. Sleeping with your kids is a parenting decision, not a medical decision, and your doctor is not any more qualified than you are to give parenting advice, and probably less so.
IN this decade we often hear that something all psychopathic killers have in common is a childhood history of cruelty to animals. This article of faith is so ingrained in our society that if you mention in any public forum that your small son tossed a cat in the air to see it land on its feet, you will be told that he probably needs counseling. Yet I sat in my living room one afternoon last year and listened to three or four men, all fine, upstanding, moral, contributing members of their community recount even worse instances of childhood cruelty to animals. In another few years maybe some of the experts will realize that they might need to examine the background of nonpsychopaths, and they will realize that many otherwise normal males are less than kind to animals at some point in their boyhood. I don't mean this is acceptable. The small boy in our house who threw cats to watch them land on their feet was sharply reprimanded- but we needn't make this larger than it is, either. It's normal childish misbehavior which should not be ignored, but neither does it require professional counseling. Little boys are precious, but they do seem to take just a little bit longer than girls do at imagining how they would feel if they were a cat and a small boy was tossing them into the air.
Which brings us to Barbie Dolls and the insidious and barborous fashion in which some children treat them. A Study Has Been Done, and Barbie leads a hard life.
The findings were revealed as part of an in-depth look by psychologists and management academics into the role of brands among 7 to 11-year-old schoolchildren.
The researchers had not intended to focus on Barbie, but they were taken aback by the rejection, hatred and violence she provoked when they asked the children about their feelings for the doll.
Violence and torture against Barbie were repeatedly reported across age, school and gender. No other toy or brand name provoked such a negative response.
“You might expect little girls to love their Barbie and expect an imaginary love in return. Instead girls feel violence and hatred towards their Barbie,” Agnes Nairn, one of the researchers, said.
One interpretation of this phenomenon is that the children are reacting to the proliferation of different types of the doll, which range from Fashion Barbie to Queen Elizabeth I Barbie and even a Geisha Barbie.
“The children never talked of one single, special Barbie. The girls almost always talked about having a box full of Barbies. So to them Barbie has come to symbolise excess. Barbies are not special; they are disposable, and are thrown away and rejected,” Dr Nairn said.
Yes, I admit it, I tortured Barbie Dolls, too. I am not alone. The Palmtree Pundit reports that she, too, was a mutilator of the Barbie Doll. She cut their hair, thinking it would grow back (who knew hair cutting was torture? Think about that the next time one child cuts her sibling's hair!). I guess it's time to start asking our children, "Well how would you feel if you were the doll and the doll were you and it cut your hair? Hmmm, young lady?" Perhaps some questions are better not asked, after all.
Breitbart has a little more:
Nairn said many girls saw Barbie as an inanimate object rather than a treasured toy.
Palmtree points out:
Pardon me, but Barbie is an inanimate object even if she is a treasured toy. Seems to me that someone is taking this stuff a little too seriously.
Indeed.
Bonnet Tip to Arts and Letters Daily for original link to the tortured Barbie study. What's next? Children (and adults) who bite the heads off of their gummi bears?
I always despised Barbie.
ReplyDeleteNot because she was pretty or blond or perfect or anything... I just remember sitting outside on a blistering summer day, playing Barbie with the girl down the street because she insisted. We were sitting there dunking those stupid plastic dolls in that stupid pink plastic pool and I thought "This doll doesn't care that she has a pool. I don't have a pool - and I don't fit in that pool. I can't believe I'm jealous of a doll. I hate Barbie."
My brother and I had great fun one Saturday morning devising more culturally relevant Barbies. StreetWalker Barbie, STD Barbie, Crack Addict Barbie, Chemotherapy Barbie... And to go more historical - there was Guillotine Barbie.
Yeah, my mom thought we needed therapy.
...Interesting. We weren't allowed to have Barbie doll growing up. So we had a few "fashion dolls" (mostly Skipper and Ginny, no adults) -- until my grandfather bought my sister an actual BARBIE!. My parents couldn't say No to grandfather. so after that my sister got 2 or 3 total. (I think i only got 1 -- I was getting too old for Barbie) And we treasured -- not just our Barbies but all of our dolls. I can't imagine trying to even just take the head off! So this whole idea of hating Barbie is just foreign to me.
ReplyDeleteI have to add that I never was a big fan of dolls anyway.
ReplyDeleteBut I loved Breyer Horses!
The psychopath indicator isn't animal cruelty alone. The studies indicate (and yes I know you can make studies say what you want, lol) that it's a triad of animal mutilation, bed wetting and fire setting. Children who do all three of these things tend to show psychological problems. But ity would be interesting to see what non-psychopaths have all three of those activities in their childhood as well.
ReplyDeleteI have had the experience of having the professional psychobabblists in the family and circle of friends suggest that cat throwing requires psychological counseling.
ReplyDeleteAnd Gem, that is fascinating- I don't know about the bed-wetting, but I do know that all of the men I mentioned were fascinated by fires. Frankly, I have known very, very few little boys who were not.
And bed-wetting is primarily a sleep issue, IMO, also prevalent among normal little boys.
Gem, I hate to tell you three things about myself...
ReplyDeleteSo I'll just stick to one. When I first learned that my prospective father-in-law was a firefighter, I was worried lest he should find out about the fires I set in my backyard. Boy did I get in trouble for that, as a boy. Yet it turns out that firefighters themselves have that "pyromaniac" gene. I now have three firefighter inlaws and have no qualms about sharing the story; all of them can identify. :)
I am one of those who subscribes to the theory that a moral sense is somewhat learned... or to put it more simply, that children are little monsters who have to be taught to share.
ReplyDeleteYes, I love children. I just don't look at them as little angels so much as potential angels. Who occasionally use magnifying glasses to set ants on fire.
BDurbin, you're quite right. And will you all think I'm a dreadful person if I tell you that not only did I used to put salt on snails as a child, just to watch them foam, but the magnifying glass on the ants thing made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteI'm embarrassed by both these things, but there it is. I would not even tell my son about either of them.
The only Barbie I owned was a Bionic Woman Barbie. You could roll back the skin on her arms and legs to see the cool bionic wiring! The 'skin' eventually tore, so she looked a little as though she'd been flayed. A Barbie that was meant to be mutilated, I guess?
ReplyDeleteI know when Hubby worked in a juvenile treatment facility for problem youth, they pretty much all had those 3 things in common -- in addition to the fact that every single one of them had been physically abused and more than half had been sexually abused. I'd imagine that the 'in addition' factors probably weight much more than the other three. Oh, and the bedwetting thing, if I recall, it was bedwetting beyond a certain age where it would be considered more 'normal'.
ReplyDeleteA few decades ago doctors were finding that co-sleeping was a common factor in psychological disorders, too, because they never thought to check and see how common it was in normal kids, nor did they notice that entire cultures practice co-sleeping without psychological harm to their offspring.
ReplyDeleteI think the 'in addition' factors you mention *definitely* outweighed the other three.
Bedwetting beyond a so-called 'normal' age is extremely common in boys who sleep very heavily.
I imagine something else all those delinquents had in common is that they watched television, wore blue jeans, ate meals, drank soda, and mostly slept in beds- but that's not good science.
The animal maltreatment, I suspect, is a factor but only certain types. Most of the things my husband and other fine upstanding citizens did were pretty awful, but they were pretty quickly over with, too. Long, drawn out torture is probably something to worry about it. Even the normal stuff is something parents need to deal with, I just don't think we need to freak out about it.
But firesetting- that is so typically male. I would worry more about a boy who didn't demonstrate an interest in fire than one who did. I really think we've completely given over both common sense and a belief in sin to the Psycho-babble professions, which are filled with people who went into those professions in the first place because they were personally so damaged themselves, and they have no grounding or baseline for 'normal.' My dad is one of these, and even he admits that he almost never met a social worker with an ounce of common sense.