The “adult baby” lifestyle has recently taken off in the LGBTQ community, decades after the first public event dedicated to adults who identify and live as babies reportedly occurred in the 1990s.
A group of “adult baby” diaper lovers (ABDL) called the Diaper Pail Friends reached almost 3,000 members by 1995, according to Parent Giving. Psychologists raised the idea of adults enjoying wearing baby diapers beginning in the 1980s, the outlet reported.
Now, the topic has resurfaced as a trend within the LGBTQ community after a social media post from three “adult babies” sucking on pacifiers at the Paris Pride Parade went viral. The Twin Cities Pride Festival in Minneapolis hosted the Minnesota Adult Diaper Enthusiasts (MADE) as one of its vendors in July, per Libs of TikTok and MADE’s online events page.
“I think that many people (let’s be honest – they’re all men) with paraphilias have attached themselves to the LGB community to take advantage of the goodwill gays and lesbians have enjoyed in recent years,” Joseph Burgo, vice-director of GenSpect, told the Daily Caller. “They’re piggy-backing on the gains gays and lesbians have made in social acceptance and trying to exploit them for their own benefit.”
“I think it’s been around for awhile, but people have been doing it behind closed doors,” activist and author Oli London told the Caller. “These people feel emboldened to do these private events. They’re being celebrated for it rather than you know, doing it in their private home.”
Various outlets and online channels have interviewed “adult babies” over the years. In 2018, iWonder interviewed Stanley Thornton, a grown man who sleeps in a crib, wears diapers and drinks from a bottle. Thornton made a website for people like himself in 2018, but the link for the website is now broken. Thornton and his roommate received social security disability benefits as of 2011, according to multiple reports at the time. (RELATED: Pride Parade Activist In Bondage Gear Attacks Gay People For Adopting A ‘White Supremacy’ Narrative)
TLC U.K. interviewed a 25-year-old living as a baby in 2019. The individual, identified only as “Riley,” reported being “addicted” to living as a baby, a lifestyle that allegedly cost over $400 a month.
“Whenever I come home I always slip into one of my cute little outfits, and it helps me wash away all the stress of the big, tough world,” Riley, who is also transgender, says in the video. “I believe that gender is something that you can choose. I very much believe that I am a girl. It just feels so comfortable and it’s just so right for me.”
iWonder interviewed another “adult baby,” an online influencer in the community called “Paigey,” in 2022. Paigey’s 426 monthly subscribers help pay for her lifestyle, Daily Mail reported in 2020.
“For me personally, being my lifestyle 24/7, it’s not sexual. I just really enjoy it,” Paigey said.
“Look, if anyone identifies as a child or a baby, I mean, obviously they have pedophilic tendencies,” London told the Caller.
“While I’ve worked with people with fetish-driven behavior and know quite a lot about it, I’ve never worked with an ‘adult baby,'” Burgo, who is a psychotherapist, told the Caller. “That being said, I’m confident that it’s not much different from other fetishes, where the aim is to control and ritualize aspects of their sexuality and to evade authentic emotional relationships where you come to need and depend upon another person in an authentic way.”
Online research on the subject of “adult babies” reveals conflicting reports on the motivation of such individuals. While some say the individuals are carrying out an innocuous lifestyle or seeking to deal with trauma brought on by childhood sexual abuse, others say the lifestyle is motivated by a sexual fetish.
“I like to think of me as the Q in LGBTQ as in the old fashioned meaning of Queer,” one post in an “adult baby” online forum reads.
“I see myself both as bi and queer partly because I lived exclusively as gay throughout college and yeah, wearing and enjoying diapers and sometimes regressing as sissy,” another post reads.
In one post on the Internet forum Quora, a user asks, “what’s the appeal” of living as an “adult baby.”
“Basically, the attraction is a very individual — and a very complex matter, not really fully understood — but is pretty much accepted that it is harmless,” one user responded.
“Some ABDL use the diapers as a sexual fetish and normally they enjoy wearing a diaper during sex or in a sexual way,” another user wrote.
“I think it’s dangerous because people … are trying to push to have minor attracted persons normalized,” London said of the “adult baby” trend.
“The adult baby doesn’t want real contact with another person, to build a life together, to be truly vulnerable. Sexual fetishes help the person to evade all those experiences by substituting ritualized sex practice for true intimacy,” Burgo said.