Dolls - Glenn Conjurske

Dolls

By Glenn Conjurske

It is a very natural thing for girls to play with dolls. Females of all ages have a very strong mothering instinct. Little girls love to hold babies. My first daughter has been taking care of babies almost since she was a baby herself. In the absence of real babies, girls will naturally take up a doll, and mother that. In the absence of a doll, they will pretend a kitten is a baby—-or a stick, or an old shoe, or anything which comes to hand. Girls do this by nature, and we can hardly suppose there is anything wrong in it. It would seem rather a good thing to cultivate the mothering instinct which belongs to their feminine nature.

Some, however, have held it to be evil for girls to play with dolls. “Dollatry” it has been called, as though a doll were some kind of idol. An image it is, no doubt, but hardly an idol, and in spite of some similarity in spelling, there is really no etymological relationship between “doll” and “idol.”

But the past generation or two have seen the advent—-and the great popularity—-of a new kind of doll, which is not a baby, but a shapely young woman. This has necessarily made playing with dolls a new kind of thing. These new dolls are not babies to mother, but models to emulate. And what sort of models? Sensuous, immodest, and extremely worldly. I have known one Christian mother to object to these new dolls on the basis of their shapeliness, but that is little likely even to be noticed by the girls who play with them. What will be noticed, and what will exert an influence, is their worldliness. All the trappings of these new dolls consist of neither more nor less than worldliness. We cannot help but believe that the whole business has been inspired by the devil. Playing with dolls after this fashion is no longer a wholesome thing. Mothering baby dolls may serve to cultivate wholesome emotions and habits in girls, but playing with this new brand of doll can only cultivate the wrong kind of passions, and inspire with a host of improper desires. Christian parents should see to it that their daughters have no such dolls in the house.

Glenn Conjurske