Psychological article on ABDL

A psychology article by Giovanni Sabato published on Cerveau & Psycho, available on cairn.info and on Brain&Psycho

They wear diapers and enjoy bottle-feeding: they are adult babies. Ordinary people who, for pleasure, adopt infantile behavior, an increasingly widespread phenomenon.

In short

Putting on a diaper, drinking from a bottle or playing with a rattle: this is the hobby of thousands of adults called ABDL, or in French, "adult babies and diaper lovers."
Some want to relive the sensations of childhood, others fetishize diapers.
Behind these behaviors, neither OCD nor pedophilia. But, most often, an unhappy childhood that we seek to "revisit".

Mario, all happy, lets himself be put in a diaper. Then he crawls off to play with stuffed animals. At bottle time, he suckles, perched on a high chair, before going to sleep in a crib.

Nothing strange about all this, except that Mario is 36 years old. He is one of those who are called the adult babies-diaper lovers (ABDL), in French "adult baby diaper addicts", that is to say adults who love to adopt infantile behaviors (the adult babies), put on diapers (the diaper lovers), or even both.

Some classify this phenomenon in the large family of paraphilias, which were formerly called perversions: an intense sexual interest in something other than classic mating between consenting adults. These tendencies are considered non-pathological as long as they do not cause suffering for the person concerned or their partners – in the latter case, we speak of paraphilic disorder. However, for many, ABDL practices have little to do with sex. These “strange” behaviors have more complex roots, still poorly understood and little studied by psychologists.

Currently, the number of ABDL people is difficult to estimate, even if the Diaper Alliance Foundation speaks of 34,000 followers for France. In some countries like Italy, the phenomenon is beginning to be studied by psychologists. "It is an underground phenomenon. These people have an ordinary social and professional life, but to live their deep feelings, they put on a mask. Identifying them is difficult, because they do not seek psychological assistance and do not have other contacts related to these behaviors, nor do they have reference associations," explains Raffaella Perrella, associate professor in the psychology department of the Luigi Vanvitelli University in Caserta, in southern Italy. With her colleague Vincenzo Paolo Senese, she coordinated a survey on Italian ABDLs, published in 2020 in the journal International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Carried out in collaboration with doctoral students Antonietta Lasala and Francesco Paparo, this is the first study on the subject in Europe.

A simple web search is enough to realize the scale of the phenomenon. On Fetlife, a social network dedicated to BDSM enthusiasts – eroticism based on the consensual exchange of power in the context of dominance and submission, bondage and sadomasochistic or similar practices – there are more than 1,000 ABDL groups, most centered around a geographic area or a specific practice. Some have several thousand members, which is almost as many as the groups dealing with the most popular themes in this environment, such as spanking.

Adult baby seeks diaper lover

Until his recent death, American psychologist Brian Zamboni was one of the most prolific researchers on the subject. A specialist in human sexuality at the University of Minnesota, he conducted a major study of nearly 2,000 ABDLs recruited and interviewed online. He produced a series of analyses published between 2014 and 2019.

The vast majority of respondents were male and experienced psychological distress about their preferences only because of their low social acceptance: fear of being discovered or misunderstood, shame in front of loved ones or disapproval of their partner. Indeed, half of the respondents were in a relationship, and while a few were lucky enough to have a partner who understood them and sometimes got into the game, half of them reported that their partner disapproved of these childish inclinations.

A heterogeneous panorama emerges from this study. The phenomenon does not correspond to a single type of behavior nor is it explained by identical motivations for all: it covers a range of games, sensations and causes, which can be linked to two major currents.

THE diaper lovers (DL) primarily enjoy wearing diapers, which have an explicit sexual value. For some, this preference is fetishistic: they experience excitement at the idea of wearing diapers or the contact of their genitals with fabric, plastic or urine and excrement – which they can simulate, to avoid soiling themselves with real excrement, by pouring water or soft foods, such as porridge or banana, inside. They may also be excited by the humiliation associated with wearing diapers or by submission to the potential “adult”. The game may include other elements specific to the adult-child relationship, such as spanking, which here has an erotic value. “Because it involves the sexual dimension, this is a paraphilia, which can be included in the category of BDSM,” says Perrella.

The second group is that of the adult babies (AB), for whom infantile behaviors constitute on the contrary a form of regression, that is to say a return to a previous state of personal development, often at a very young age. These behaviors fall within the framework of what are called "regression games" or "ageplay", role-playing games in which one pretends to be an age other than one's own, usually that of an infant, child or adolescent. The people concerned want to feel like toddlers, to adopt their behavior, to use their toys, diapers, high chairs and bottles to better identify with this age and to regress to the infantile stage. When the game is purely regressive, it involves nothing other than what a real child would experience and therefore excludes sexual acts. Some nevertheless experience pleasure of this order, but this is not the intended goal. Regression games are therefore not a paraphilic interest, but can have various functions.

The reasons for the regression

Infantilism, like other situations of submission, allows us to forget our responsibilities, to abandon ourselves to the care of our partner, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to give and receive that acceptance and affection typical of relationships with the youngest, which ignores what we do and what we are, skillful or clumsy, obedient or polite, cute or naughty.

The division into adult babies on the one hand and diaper lovers on the other, however, should be taken with a grain of salt, according to experts. "We can categorize these behaviors in different ways, depending on the practices or their motivations. However, it is difficult to define these groups precisely, given that the practices and stimuli can overlap - as for adult babies who get sexual arousal from them - and evolve over time. It is therefore more accurate to consider the phenomenon as a continuum of behaviors and motivations. Moreover, since so many followers indulge in it for reasons that are not sexual, perhaps we should stop considering it as a paraphilia," Zamboni believes.

Perrella agrees: "We must also understand that adult babies represent only one extreme case of a spectrum of more innocuous manifestations, but which are linked to the same dynamics. For example, if a fifty-year-old still dreams of becoming a ballerina, could this desire not be linked to the phenomenon of adult babies? ? »

Return to lost childhood or deviant sexuality?

What are people who behave like children looking for? There is no unequivocal answer to this question. "Given the diversity of the nature and manifestations of this phenomenon, it is not possible to identify a specific cause: different people do it for different reasons," Perrella believes.

ABDL practices help lovers relax, escape from negative emotions, and create spontaneous social and emotional bonds free from the burden of responsibilities. For some, it is also an attempt to relive their childhood. They hope to find a sense of pampering and love that they missed when they were little or, on the contrary, that they felt in abundance and regret. "Our ABDLs feel that they have skipped that stage of childhood where we are surrounded by that special affection that normally unites adults and small children or, conversely, that they have experienced it only too well. A significant number of them have suffered abuse when they were little. Others feel that they have grown up too quickly, for example because the birth of a little brother deprived them of their parents' attention. Still others had absent parents. They are therefore looking to fill a gap and rediscover what they were unable to experience as children, or simply to relive these wonderful sensations,” explains Proudence Baelish, co-founder of the cultural association AB Nursery Italia.

This situation makes ABDLs vulnerable and pushes them to hide, for two reasons: "Because this behavior is considered a sign of weakness and a subject of mockery, and because some equate it with pedophilia." However, on this last point, nothing could be further from the truth..

Regarding the sexual dimension, "no one knows how sexual preferences develop, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual orientation, or practices such as BDSM. All the hypotheses formulated, such as those of childhood abuse, attachment problems or psychiatric disorders, have been refuted by research and we do not have any certainty at present", explains Daniela Botta, psychologist at the Institute of Clinical Psychology in Rome, who published a survey on BDSM enthusiasts in Italy in the journal Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2019. However, certain motifs recur frequently in the portraits of ABDL drawn in studies from different countries.

Abuse and mistreatment

First of all, as in the Italian cases cited by Proudence Baelish, we find the perception of a childhood marked by parental neglect, when not by real abuse. Many ABs (if not all) are characterized by an anxious attachment to the reference figure, or by having grown up in a single-parent family, or by the memory of bad relationships with their father and mother (independently, of course, of the parents' actual behavior) or by having directly suffered physical and sexual violence. Reliving these moments as an adult is therefore a way of regaining one's rights over a period that one feels one has not fully experienced; it is also a way of reliving an unpleasant experience by being this time in control of the situation, with the serene certainty that no one can hurt us anymore, and of rewriting history so that, this time, it ends well.

Another set of reasons aims to relieve unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and bad mood, but linked to other causes: for example, incontinence and the parents' reactions to it; putting on a diaper then provides a feeling of protection. Several ABDLs also link the origin of their fantasy to an episode of enuresis.

In short, playing at being a child seems to many to be a way of dealing with negative states of various origins, from sadness to frustration, from anxiety to the crushing weight of responsibilities. However, here again, the mechanisms at play are not the same for everyone. Some find it reassuring and liberating to be able to urinate and defecate in a diaper, to give up their self-control and their physiological functions without risking shame or humiliation. Conversely, some seek precisely a feeling of humiliation by putting it on. Still others are excited by the transgression that wearing, or even using diapers in public represents, the feeling of being able to be "naughty", of "out of sight, out of mind". Finally, some simply find the sensations provided by the diaper pleasant, the softness, the warmth, the dampness or the friction against the fabric and plastic.

Some, as we have seen, find sexual stimulation in this practice. The distinction between these and the others is, however, less clear than the division into two categories suggests: even among those who do not cite eroticism as their primary motivations, many mention acts of masturbation or sexual relations with the caregiver (nanny).

"The relationship between ABDL and caregiver "It is always about domination/submission. Even without the mistreatment characteristic of other BDSM practices, it is a situation of domination of one partner over the other, where power management, the adult's sense of responsibility, a form of gentle humiliation come into play," Baelish also observes.

THE adult babies, ordinary adults?

Raffaella Perrella's study finds among Italians broadly the same profiles, meanings and motivations as in international studies. "We turned to AB Nursery Italia, which shared the link to our study on the main sites and social networks frequented by Italian ABDLs," explains the researcher. The questionnaires asked participants about their general characteristics, medical and psychological history, childhood memories and various psychological and psychopathological aspects, such as their personality and states of anxiety and depression.

The respondents were 38 people aged 18 to 74, mostly men, who often had experiences of emotional deprivation or parental rejection (both from the mother and the father), anxiety and other negative emotions, as well as episodes of enuresis. Many also seemed to have difficulties in their romantic relationships: the majority of them were single and only 16 % were in a stable relationship; many had never had a sexual partner and only practiced masturbation.

"Poor relationships with parents can hinder the development of intimate relationships and explain the instability of relationships. The feeling of exclusion often leads to cognitive distortions such as a hypersensitivity to rejection - real or perceived - and therefore pushes to avoid interpersonal relationships that could realize this fear. This is undoubtedly where many of the fears and social anxieties encountered in these subjects arise, such as the fear of being judged or rejected," observes Perrella.

ABDL fantasies generally appear during the prepubescent period, around the age of 11 on average, and the acts around the age of 19. However, the age at which the fantasies appear allows us, broadly speaking, to distinguish two groups: in terms of psychological adaptation and self-image, those who developed them in adulthood seem to do better than those who experienced them before adolescence. The latter are more prone to anxiety, emotional instability and depressive symptoms. "In them, the interest in ABDL practices could reflect a deep-rooted psychological malaise, linked to the feeling of being rejected by their parents. The consequences of this feeling follow them into adult life. On the other hand, in those who adopt these practices later, it may be primarily a game," explains Perrella.

Overall, the study participants do not have any proven disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, which some assume to be the cause of some cases, or any real psychological maladjustment, which is thought to be a consequence of perceived poor relationships with parents. They do, however, show some signs of malaise, such as anxiety and depressive symptoms, and therefore seem to have more psychological difficulties than the general population or the population of BDSM enthusiasts. Indeed, "various large studies conducted from the United States to Australia, as well as ours in Italy, show that BDSM enthusiasts have the same psychological balance as the general population, or are even better in some aspects, probably because communication between partners occupies a large place in their sexual practices. This takes place both before the game, with the exchange around fantasies, desires and limits and the negotiation of what can and cannot be done, and after, with what is called theaftercare, where we debrief what happened, the feelings experienced and where we treat any wounds the other person may have, including emotional ones,” explains Daniela Botta.

However, in the BDSM nebula, those who show the most fragility when something goes wrong are men who play a submissive role. "They are the ones who, in the event of suffering - in our survey, it was sexual dysfunction - experience it the worst. We don't know why and we propose to investigate this subgroup as such to understand its specific problems. The reason could be that the role of submissive man goes against gender stereotypes and these people probably have more difficulty reconciling themselves with their impulses," says Botta.

"However, the group of Italian ABDLs studied here, like those in other studies, was mainly composed of men, and the "child" is placed in a position of submission in relation to the caregiver"The difficulties encountered by the subjects could depend on their role as submissive men, and not on the practice of ABDL," Botta supposes.

ABDLs are not pedophiles

Some people see those who enjoy playing children as a kind of pedophile, with the idea that "you want to feel like a child, so you are attracted to them." This view is of course rejected by those most concerned, who claim: "We feel a sense of tenderness and a desire to protect children towards them, which we ourselves want to feel when we revert to childhood." Scientific studies that have sought to verify this idea support their view.

Johaness Fuss, a psychiatrist at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, published in 2019 in the journal Jjournal of Sex & Marital Therapy a study of more than 1,900 adult babies male. It shows that pedophile attractions are no more frequent among them than in the general population.

"Even if that were the case, we could offer another explanation," Perrella says. "Some ABDLs suffered abuse as children, and we know that some victims become pedophiles themselves. However, ABs have found another way to process their experiences: rather than turning the pain they have felt against a child, they seek to be active, to adopt a mode of action that allows them, in a way, to correct their experience and regain control. However, the frequency of this phenomenon remains to be studied."

A nursery reserved for adults

In several countries there are associations dedicated to adult babies: they manage "nurseries" and try to disseminate information about the phenomenon among enthusiasts and the public. In Italy, the AB Nursery Italia association was founded in 2015 by Proudence Baelish, a psychology graduate who works as a nanny there (www.abnursery.it).

"The association seeks to inform about the phenomenon and offers services to the ABDL," explains Baelish. In particular, it organizes two types of events. The first are open to everyone, including those who are simply curious and want to discover this world. These include, for example, outings to the cinema or "milk and cake" meetings to have a snack and chat, sometimes talk to a psychologist or listen to the testimony of a member of the association.

The other type of event, on the other hand, is private: it is a "nursery" reserved for adult babies. The latter can dress like children, even wearing a diaper if it corresponds to the perceived age, play like children and be welcomed like children. Before the Covid-19 epidemic, the sessions took place every two months, alternating between Rome and another city in Italy. The nursery is not for profit (the requested participation only serves to cover the costs) and the session lasts 4 to 5 hours, following a precise program including the welcome, games and cuddles, the meal, the change of diapers, the lullaby and the goodbyes. Sexual contact or breastfeeding are formally excluded, only play and care activities are planned.

“Only six adult babies attend each session because we only have two nannies and the interactions involve a lot of physical contact, so it’s impossible to accommodate more,” Baelish explains. “The perceived age of most of our members is between 0 and 4 years old; only two are 6 and 8 years old and they do other activities, like math problems or dictations. They are mostly male, because we have noticed that female children tend to establish a different kind of relationship, with what is called a daddy, which involves a certain sexual tension. Boys, on the other hand, are looking for cuddles; they practice sex in their daily adult lives. We also have sissy babies, that is, men who change not only age, but also gender, and play at being little girls.

Here again, many have suffered from malaise, abuse, a childhood experienced as too short or absent parents. Many undergo psychotherapy. "The nursery allows them to contextualize their malaise in a protected context. But because we do not offer enough sessions, many seek these contacts from prostitutes or other professionals, who often do not have the sensitivity they need. In general, they regret it, but they go back, because it is still better than nothing," says Baelish.

"In total, we welcomed about a hundred people. Getting them to come is not easy: even if there are hundreds of them on the web, when we invite them, they are afraid, they think that we want to take advantage of this weakness of theirs to exploit them, reject them and so on. So we do a lot of work of encouragement to create a climate of trust." A work unfortunately almost reduced to nothing in 2017 by the program "Le Iene" ("The Hyenas"), which sensationalistically broadcast images taken without the knowledge of the association and in particular a video of intimate relations between a couple, presented as an activity of the crèche. As always, the correction broadcast the following week did not repair the damage caused or stop the torrents of mud that poured out on the web.