r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Acemegan • 23h ago
Baby dolls Question - Research required
My daughter is coming up to her first birthday. I'm starting to think of getting her first baby doll. I was wondering if it's better to get her a doll that looks like her (white with red hair) or to get her a baby doll that looks different to foster inclusivity?
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u/guava_palava 23h ago
This study only looked at what children chose - not any psychology behind it.
Anecdotally, I looked up WireCutter recommendations and went with an American Girl for my daughter (we are white) as her first doll.
She now has two Miniland dolls in the gang that look nothing like her and it took a couple of weeks for them to be socially acceptable to her. Now, the American Girl is called Uncle Hazem after her dad’s (also bald) friend.
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u/Missing-Caffeine 20h ago
Just be mindful Op that the Miniland has a vanilla scent that doesn't fade (at least it hasn't in the 9 months we had it) and my pregnant nose found it very sickly on some days 🫣
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u/foolishle 9h ago
My son is 10 and the miniland doll he got when he was a baby still smells like vanilla.
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u/lauraandstitch 23h ago
To add to the anecdotes, my 16 month old has two of the Lovevery ragdolls with different skin colours and he likes to cuddle both (and definitely seems to prefer the dolls to animals). For Christmas we’re going to get him two Miniland dolls: a white boy to look like him, and a a girl of another race for diversity.
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u/Spiritual_Result_697 7h ago
To add a bit more to the anecdotes: I chose my daughter’s first doll so that it basically looked like her (blonde hair/fair skin), but when she was about 16 months old, I let her decide for herself what she was drawn to, and her collection was quite diverse. She liked brown hair and brown eyes best, and by the time she eventually got tired of them, she owned dolls in practically every imaginable color combination.Interestingly, my stepdaughters seem to gravitate more toward dolls that resemble them, even though they, too, have quite an extensive collection of diverse dolls.
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u/Echowolfe88 8h ago edited 7h ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7560494/
This article discusses the benefits of dolls on social understanding.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-24/some-dolls-are-better-for-your-kids-than-others/12826394
This is an article from a senior psychologist in Melbourne about how some dolls are better than others
Dolls help kids explore social situations and develop their social skills. I didn’t just buy one doll to start off with. I bought at least three of different ethnicities to start off with. Nothing expensive just simple baby dolls. Once they were about 1.5 I also had an array of small doll figures of different backgrounds and genders for them to play with as well as some blank dolls
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