When adults start to like stuffed toys, is it childish or is it because they still have a childlike innocence?

Leviathan Press:

Is it escapism and immaturity to own a favorite stuffed toy after adulthood? The answer is obviously no. People generally fall into a cognitive trap of either this or that, that is, people who still like stuffed toys after adulthood must be childish, which will definitely have an adverse impact on his/her social life. But the question is, if this evaluation is replaced with "childishness", will it be much more positive?

Stuffed animals are often thought of as something for kids — a childish hobby that we should eventually give up, like imaginary friends and Capri-Sun. If the hobby continues beyond adolescence, it can be embarrassing. “Please, no one is going to psychoanalyze me for going to bed with a bunny every night at 30 years old,” actor Margot Robbie joked on “The Late Late Show With James Corden.”

Yet this isn’t uncommon: surveys have found that around 40% of American adults sleep with a stuffed animal[1]. And in the past few years, stuffed animals have become more popular among adults.

© Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty

Erica Kanesaka, an Emory University professor who studies the culture of cuteness, told me in an email that it’s not just a matter of keeping childhood mementos into adulthood for sentimental reasons — adults are also buying stuffed animals for themselves simply because they like them.

The kidult market (defined by one market research firm as anyone over 12) is said to generate about $9 billion in toy sales annually. Among the most popular modern plush toy brands are Squishmallows and Jellycat, which specialize in nontraditional stuffed animals like cabbages and rainbow ostriches.

Squishmallow soft toys. © Catharine Parker

Generation Z has been at the forefront of embracing stuffed toys: 65% of Squishmallows buyers are between 18 and 24 years old.[2] Toy industry consultant Richard Gottlieb told NPR that “it went from being awkward… to where it is today, with Gen Z and millennials both playing with it with pride.” Of course, many people still find it weird or childish for adults to collect stuffed animals.

When TikTok star Charli D'Amelio posted a photo of herself lounging with a small group of colorful squishhmallows, some commenters immediately started mocking her collection. D'Amelio was frustrated: "Everyone expects me to be an adult all the time," she wrote (she was 16 at the time). "I'm still growing up."

While the online dispute may seem innocuous, it points to an ongoing cultural negotiation over how much room adult life can leave for cuteness and playfulness, and whether adults need to “grow up.”

As a child, I wasn't too interested in stuffed animals; I viewed them as helpless, candy-less piñatas. But in my early 20s, many of my friends started buying and giving stuffed animals to each other. One friend asked me whether it would be more appropriate to name a stuffed dragon, Belly or Lulu.

For my 21st birthday, I was given a stuffed pretzel toy of Jellycat. I keep it by my bed, and I know many of my peers do the same. Some attribute the growing popularity of stuffed toys to social media, where they are cute, nostalgic and highly shareable. Kanesaka says the global popularity of Japan's Hello Kitty and Pikachu also plays a role.

Millennials sleep with stuffed animals, what happens when they have kids of their own? © Jesse Lenz

Others blame younger generations for being too fragile, as one headline in Philadelphia Magazine put it, “Millennials! Put down your blankets and stuffed animals. Grow up!”[3] But the most common explanation seems to be that the stress, loneliness, and uncertainty of the early pandemic led adults to seek out the comfort of stuffed animals. “I took a stuffed polar bear from my childhood bedroom,” Sarah Gannett wrote in The New York Times, “to ward off the onslaught of bad news and fear.”

Yet scholars like Simon May, a philosopher at King’s College London, aren’t sure the resurgence of adult stuffed animals is entirely related to the pandemic. May told me that stress and uncertainty were already a part of human life long before 2020. To him and other scholars who study cute animals, the resurgence is part of a larger shift that’s been going on for centuries: The boundaries between childhood and adulthood are disappearing.

Childhood is not always something to be missed. It is a period of life fraught with uncertainty: many children do not live to adulthood, dying from diseases that are now preventable. Some work in factories and mines from an early age. “To give an example that is unimaginable now,”

"It was not only common but also acceptable for children to pass out in taverns until the early 20th century," Joshua Paul Dale, a professor of cute cultural studies at Chuo University in Tokyo, wrote in Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World.

Dale believes that the concept of "childhood" was largely formed during the Enlightenment. Before that, people mostly viewed children as miniature adults - even many babies in medieval paintings looked like tough, miniature adults, with receding hairlines and all. Philosopher John Locke's "tabula rasa" helped people to reposition children as blank slates with potential rather than half-baked adults.

By the 20th century, often referred to as the "Century of the Child," protections for children as a formative period in life had matured considerably. May even called the values ​​that emerged at the time "the cult of the child." By 1918, every state in the U.S. had passed laws requiring children to attend school. In 1938, the U.S. enacted strict restrictions on child labor.

In 1959, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child advocated for “special safeguards and care” for children. Parents could also expect their children to live longer: 46% of children born in 1800 did not reach the age of five; by 1900, that figure had almost halved.

In The Power of Cute, May writes that childhood has become “the new sacred place.” Yet, Dale told me, in recent years, while childhood remains revered and protected, adulthood has become more often associated with hardship than freedom. A recent study found that adults aged 18 to 30 have the most negative views of adulthood,[4] perhaps because the delay of traditional “adult” milestones, such as marriage and having children, has led to a gap between expectations and reality.

Dell also attributes pessimistic adulthood to factors such as the gig economy and job insecurity: “It’s getting harder and harder to be an adult now.”

As a result, the line between childhood and adulthood seems to have blurred in recent years. “Are we seeing, on the one hand, children acting more and more like adults?” May writes. In large part due to social media, children are frequently exposed to adult creators who share adult anxieties, which has also led to the emergence of “Sephora tweens”.

"On the other hand," Mei continued, "adults are increasingly convinced that childhood is the determining factor in one's entire life." So, children in childhood are becoming adults, and adults are becoming children.

For May, childhood seems to have become a mirror through which many adults examine their own emotional lives. “In each of us, there is a young, suffering child,” wrote the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh.

The concept of the “inner child,” first popularized by psychologist Carl Jung, has become a popular wellness concept in ways that are sometimes sweet and sometimes borderline ridiculous: We often see articles like “I healed my inner child by collecting dolls” and “I took a Caribbean cruise to heal my inner child.”

On TikTok, a 2022 trend saw users post childhood photos with captions like, “When I’m mean to myself, I remember I was mean to them, too.” Meanwhile, in Jennifer Lopez’s new movie, This Is Me…Now, the emotional climax is a scene in which the adult Lopez bends over to hug her younger self and tells her, “I love you…I’m sorry.”

If childhood is “the new sacred place,” as May puts it, then this emphasis on the “inner child” may be a way for adults to insist that they themselves are sacred—and that the inner child deserves to be treated tenderly, even with stuffed animals.

© Toynk Toys

Turning to cuteness can be a way to reject the rigid, overly serious nature of adult life and acknowledge that both childhood and adulthood are constantly changing. “Embracing cuteness can also be a way to challenge traditional adult roles that have become inappropriate, outdated, and harmful,” Kanesaka writes.

Being an adult means more than just sipping scotch and paying taxes. “Rather than accepting the idea that adulthood and power only come in one form – that we have to be strong and manly – we can embrace a softer, gentler version of adulthood with stuffed animals.” Granted, collecting stuffed animals isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but there are other ways to have moments of play and wonder in adulthood, from bird watching to joining a Dungeons & Dragons league.

May believes that the shifting boundaries between childhood and adulthood are part of the natural evolution of the human mind. Boundaries will break down, especially binary oppositions: “Where we see this most clearly right now is with gender.” While legal age boundaries may remain, childhood and adulthood may one day be seen as points on a continuum rather than distinct life stages.

Ultimately, “the new way to be adult is to incorporate these childlike elements,” Dell said. The adult stuffed toy renaissance may just be a precursor to something to come: Maybe one day we’ll all be adults who still have a childlike side.

References:

[1]www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2018/03/06/4-10-american-adults-still-cuddle-stuffed-animals/32663493/

[2]time.com/6234061/toys-for-adults-popularity/

[3]www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/20/millennials-sleep-with-stuffed-animals/

[4]link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10804-024-09477-8

By Valerie Trapp

Tempura

Proofreading/Rabbit's Light Footsteps

Original text/www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/04/adult-stuffed-animal-revival/678012/

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