It’s chubby little body hasn’t even hit the shelves in the United States yet, but millions of parents are already seething over ‘Breast Milk Baby’, the doll that imitates the act of breast feeding. The doll, known as ‘Bebé glotón’ in Spanish, is made by Berjuan, a company from Alicante, and it has been very successful among young Spanish girls. In its advertising campaign, the toy maker has carefully emphasized that the product allows children to experience the “magic of motherhood,” although it’s efforts have hardly mattered. Far from sympathising with that message, alarmed conservative parents in the US consider the toy completely inappropriate and even dangerous for the education of their children, and have expressed their outrage in the media.

Some argue that ‘Breast Milk Baby’ contributes to the sexualisation of 5 and 6 year old girls - the age group the dolls are primarily marketed to - because it encourages them to pretend that they have breasts. Others speak directly of the “risk” that children are growing up too fast. “Now that underage sex and pregnancies are reaching shocking proportions, let’s have a doll which encourages young children to get pregnant!” lamented a furious mother on ‘Good Morning America’, one of the most-watched programs on television. “Would you create a toy that simulated labour pains that teaches a six year old how to handle the birthing process?” another added sarcastically.

Two years ago, Berjuan encountered the same rejections when it tried to distribute the toy for the first time. Back then, their inexperience in the market compelled them to halt the campaign, but now it seems ready to go again with the conviction that the doll will sell phenomenally in North_America. “We don’t understand why it has created so much controversy,” expressed the company’s US spokesman Dennis Lewis last Sunday. He believes that ‘Breast Milk Baby’ has an educational purpose, teaching a skill that girls need to know. One of his hopes is that the toy will help to “normalise” breast feeding.

Escalating controversy

“One hundred years ago, 90 per cent of Americans would have laughed themselves to death over this controversy. Breast feeding was a normal fact of life for families until the pharmaceutical companies struck gold in the 1920s with the production of artificial milk,” reflected Lewis. In the recent verbal escalation, he has emphasized that some parents have gone too far in their criticisms that the business is putting their children in danger. “We have been called perverts and even paedophiles for promoting feeding babies in the way God teaches us to,” he complained.

Luckily for the Spanish business, other parents have played down the matter. They consider the doll a form of entertainment for children that also has a positive message: promoting breast feeding in a society where it has been falling out of favour little by little. “The controversy over the doll shows that we still have a long way to go before accepting that breast feeding is a natural act,” argued Melissa Bartick, a journalist and mother of two children, on her blog yesterday.