Why do kids love stuffed animals so much?

What's the childhood psychology of stuffed animals and other "transitional objects"? Why do 35 percent of adults still sleep with stuffed animals? Tune in to learn more, including a brief history of the teddy bear and why the stuff possum never caught on.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From house stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Christian Christie. When I was little, I
had this Koala bear. It was about as big as
I was, and I would frequently hug the Koala to

(00:26):
the point where my mother had to constantly stitch it
up in the back. No, we were not using it
to transport drugs. She just constantly had to sew the
backup where it came undone. And in my mind, this
Koala bear had a personality of her own. She was
kind of motherly, obviously very comforting. I wanted nothing but
to to hug her and carry her around, and it

(00:48):
was very difficult to get rid of that Koala bear
when we had to have a garage sale. What was
the Koala bear's name? You know, I don't remember. I
don't think I know. I don't think it really had
a name. I had other animals that had names, and
I had a blank ee named Blankie. It was very special,
But I don't know that the coalivir had a name. Yeah,

(01:10):
I believe I've talked about my most beloved stuffed animal
on the podcast before. It was a puffal lump of
a duck named Ducky. You and I both shared a
creativity with names fairly in our childhood, and I took
Duckie everywhere until I lost Ducky, and that was a

(01:32):
sad day. But Ducky did everything with me, and she
had flying powers, and Mom washed her when she got
dirty in a pillowcase. That was how you watched puffal umps,
and for some reason I thought that was pretty nifty.
But we've talked about dolls before on stuff. Mom never

(01:53):
told you, but we wanted to talk more about stuffed
animals in particular because for you and me, and I'm
sure so many of our listeners, stuffed animals are an
integral part of childhood, and they have a rich history
and also equally rich psychology undergirding why there is this appeal,

(02:16):
the purpose that they serve not just for being cute
and making for adorable stories in our adulthood, but also
why a mom can't take a stuffed animal from a
kid and wash it, why that causes trauma, and why
you can't just replace it with a new stuffed animal.
Because they will know, I tell you, they will know
that those stitches are not the same in the back.

(02:37):
Are you speaking from experience Koala trauma? I mean, no
Blankie trauma. I mean every time my mom washed Blankie,
it was like you're gonna kill her. But then gradually
he got warmed back up to Blankie. Yeah. Sure. And
then there was the time that I'm pretty sure my
father just got rid of Blankie and made me think
that I lost it. He was already playing psychology games

(02:58):
with his small child. He didn't tell you that. Thank
you went up to the farm where your old dog.
Eventually they let blank you loose on the farm to Rome. Well,
let's look at a brief history of stuffed animals, because
it is a European trend that traveled to the United
States and it got its start in the late nineteenth

(03:22):
century with a German seamstress named Marguerite Steve. I have
one of her teddy bears. Oh yeah, not not a
not a like an original one. But I get ahead
of myself. Continue well. In nineteen oh three, Steve's nephew
created the first soft bear for his aunt, and he
came up with this idea from sketches of animals that

(03:42):
he would do at the Stuttgarden Zoo and Steve's factory
at the time produced all sorts of toys, and the
first plush toy that she tried to make was an
elephant that doubled as a pin cushion. But this concept
of the stuffed bear was revolutionary at the time because
it took the plush as spect of the rag doll
that was already very popular for kids, and rejiggered it

(04:06):
for an animal, figuring, yeah, something that people could love. No.
My mom is a flight attendant and goes to Germany
and when I was about twenty five, she brought me
home one of these these Steve Bears or have you
pronounced her last name? And the thing is you know
him because they sew a button into the ear indicating
that they're they're the genuine article in it. As a

(04:27):
twenty five year old, I was like, great a German
teddy bear for me in my mid twenties. But now
now thanks to the podcast, you know how special that.
I know how special it is, and so did George
borge felt Uh. He was an American wholesaler who saw
the bear at the Leipzig Toy Fair in and ordered

(04:47):
three thousand of them, and by World War One Marguerite
had sold millions in the US, Germany and England. Yeah,
it didn't take long for borge Felts bears to cause
a bit of a craze. Even before World War One,
we have the bear market surge when the toy bear,
which was originally sold as a zoo souvenir, became this

(05:10):
huge novelty on especially on the Jersey Shore boardwalk. And
in nineteen o six there was an ad published in
the magazine Playthings that said, any child without a teddy
nowadays is quite out of fashion. And speaking of fashion,
people automatically love the bears. Mention wanted to dress these

(05:30):
teddy bears up, and there were all these patterns that
you could buy for making different clothes and outfits for
your teddy bear. Um And by nineteen o seven they
were a hip fashion accessory for chic urban women, kind
of like how we would see women carrying around tiny
dogs today teddy bears back in the day. So I

(05:50):
should get that teddy bear out of my closet at
my parents house. I don't know that it would be
as on trend in two thousand thirteen, but you could
certainly try. But airline though I'm also speaking ahead of
myself because I'm calling them teddy bears. Oh, yes, about
the teddy part of teddy bears. Yeah, the teddy bears
part of toy lore. It probably originated with Morris Mitchum,

(06:11):
a New York storekeeper and later founder of the company
Ideal Toys, which I still I believe it is still
around Um. In nineteen o two he saw a newspaper
cartoon showing Teddy Roosevelt, the President, sparing a baby bear
on a hunting trip. Mitchem asked his wife to turn
the bear into a doll, and he got permission somehow
from Roosevelt to name it Teddy's Bear, and sold handmade

(06:34):
cloth bears from his candy store. And like I said,
this was all coinciding with that teddy bear crazed happening
and bear. The fact that it was a bear and
not a different kind of animal was also a distinctly
new concept because it merged the fierce with the cute. Because,
as Gary Cross, author of the book Kids Stuff Toys

(06:54):
in the Changing World of American Childhood, notes, uh, bear
seldom appeared in nineteenth century toy catalogs, but when they did,
they looked mean. And we're apparently designed to scare children.
Why would they be sold in toy catalogs. Then it's
like finish your dinner or I'll stick the bear on you.
Maybe it was something for Victorian era man caves. I'm

(07:16):
sure did not exist for the billiards room, a scary
little stuffed bear. Well, during World War One there was
actually a ban on German imports in England, and so
British soft toy companies flourished during this time, companies like
the British United Toy Manufacturing Company, which produced a number

(07:36):
of plush animals during this time, starting actually back in
the eighteen nineties, but moving onward. And I did not
really know the origins of one beloved toy, the stock monkey.
Did you have a stock monkey growing up? I did
not have a stock monkey. I did, but I wasn't
a big fan of it. I was like, you don't
look like a cool toy. But it turns out that

(07:58):
actually the stock monkeys origins are kind of hazy. Apparently,
when socks would get worn out, moms would take these
Warren socks and turn them into toys for their kids.
And in two Nelson Knitting Company got wind of this
and began including a sock monkey pattern with every pair
of socks, so when they wore out, moms could make
that stuffed animal. And these were the socks with the

(08:19):
red heel which became the monkey's mouth. And speaking of
very popular types of toys, like we have the Teddy
Bear and then the sock monkey. Um on the heels
of the Teddy bears popularity. This is in between Teddy
Bear and the sock monkey. Some toy manufacturers who were like, okay,
President Theodore Roosevelt had his Teddy Bear. You know what

(08:42):
we're going to try to do. We're gonna try to
make stuffed possums super popular in honor of President Taft,
who apparently, when he was visiting Atlanta where we are
right now, ordered possum and quote unquote taters at a dinner.
I'm sure because he assumed that hey, Southerners eat possum

(09:03):
and taters. And it caused a bit of a new sensation.
And so these toy manufacturers were like, we've got the
next Teddy Bear. It's a stuffed possum in honor of Taft,
because we all know how adorable possums are. Obviously, it
did not take off, but it is it's hilarious that
that one's stuffed animal legacy of poor poor Taft would

(09:27):
have been just the possum. But moving onward, in nineteen
thirty a Millns Winnie the Pooh became a plush toy.
And that's something that's gonna come up very briefly when
we talk about why kids like Christopher Robin, the fictional
Christopher Robin are so attached to toys. Um. But then
in the ninetties, plush toys were scarce and mostly handmade,

(09:50):
and then in the post war period there's more of
a focus on safety, especially in the UK with the
introduction of the British Safety Standards. Yeah, glass eyes on
toys were replaced by plastic which were held on with
a newly developed locking system introduced by Wendy Boston Place
Safe Toys. And moving forward, the nineteen fifties is when

(10:11):
American firms started contracting much of their stuffed animal work
to Taiwan, Korea and China. So those old stuffed animal
makers in the UK and Germany sort of started losing
out um. And so that that gives you the early
history of stuffed animals. I mean, the fascinating thing about
stuffed animals, is that the bear has remained so lasting throughout,

(10:36):
you know, generations of childhood's. Yeah, actually I have a
bunny right now. My mom gave it to me a
couple of years ago when I was sick, and I
was like, that's coldly, I keep it. We're not too
baby is looking. We're not even gonna touch on things
like beanie babies or how stuffed animals have become obviously
more electronic in recent years, with things like furbies and

(11:00):
so forth. Let's just stick to that. Let's stick to
the classics. Caroline Bear, the Teddy Bear. Um. But what
is it with stuffed animals? Why are we drawn to
them in the same way you mentioned having that beloved
blankie when you were a kid. Um, And that, along
with stuffed animals and dolls, are referred to by psychologists

(11:25):
as transitional objects. This idea was actually first introduced in
nineteen fifty three by Dr Donald Woods Winnicott, a prominent
pediatrician psychoanalyst, in his paper Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,
a study of the first Not Me possession and clinical
psychologist Steve Tuber sums it up thus lee. He says,

(11:49):
the baby knows the teddy bear is not mom, but
the baby can get a certain satisfaction. It is neither
mom nor totally just a stuffed animal. And Alicia Lieberman,
who's an infant mental health expert, goes on further to
say it's a bridge between the mother and the external world,
learning to deal with other people outside of your immediate realm. Yeah.

(12:11):
But when Dr Winnicott, who was very much of the
Freudian school of thought, first theorized this idea of the
stuffed animal or blanket as the transitional object, he first
linked it to early oral eroticism, saying that children start by,
you know, putting their fingers in their fists, in their mouths,

(12:33):
and then they transitioned to you know, these objects, whether
it be a stuffed animal or a blanket that they've
been um put in their mouths. And in that paper
that you mentioned, a study of the first not me possessions,
he includes this rundown of child patient study has their
transitional object and whether or not they had a good
or bad mother. Yeah, and there was one. It was

(12:56):
something like stuffed donkey to attach to the mother, like
symbolizing the type of objects symbolizing, you know, the the
closeness of attachment to the maternal figure. Thankfully, psychology has
loosened up a little bit because when it got wasn't
a huge fan of these attachment objects, because it's basically like,

(13:16):
you know, you need to cut ties with the mom
get in the real world, and yeah, no, those attachments
were pretty much believed to be unhealthy and reflective of
the mother's failing until the nineteen seventies. But on the contrary,
we know now that they're not a problem. A two
thousand study in the Journal of Consulting in Clinical Psychology
found that kids who had their beloved blankets with them

(13:37):
at the doctor's office, for instance, experience less distressed as
measured by blood pressure and heart rate. So I bet
since I've been fighting off a cold, I could really
use my blanking. Yeah, it might make you feel better.
And because as kids get older, these transitional objects, especially
stuffed animals, take on distinct personalities that help fulfill those

(14:00):
roles as comforter and imagining friend, like you did with
your Koala and as I did with Ducky, who really
was one of my BFFs at the time. Did Ducky
have a personality? Yeah, she was kind of sassy, um
but a little dim and she could only fly after

(14:20):
I gave her flying powder, usually in the form of
litten iced tea that I would drink obviously for her obviously,
Well you know, I mean talk about as kids get older.
As many as twenty five percent of young women report
taking a transitional object to college. That's coming from Dr
Barbara Howard, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at John's Hopkins.

(14:43):
So the need doesn't go away. We we still have
it when we get older for some people. There is
a travel Lodge survey that was reported on by Live
Signs and some other media outlets in October of two
thousand twelve, and they surveyed six thousand British adults and
found that thirty five percent of adults admitted to sleeping

(15:04):
with stuffed animals. And it's not just women, because there
is a gender difference as a kids age, boys usually
toss off their transitional object, their stuffed animal, their beloved blanket,
whatever it might be, sooner than the girls do, likely
because of socialization. Um. But of men in the Straveloge
survey reported that they take their teddy bear with them

(15:27):
when going away on business because they found it comforting.
And on a related note, one intense single men surveys
that they hide their teddy bear when their girlfriends stays over. Yeah,
and fourteen percent of married men said they hide it
when family and friends come to visit. So there you go. Yeah,
I mean I do think that there is uh like

(15:47):
socially we think that it's like less okay for a
guy to hang on to his stuff. I mean, that's
still a minority of men who are hiding their stuffed
animals their lovees well and that. But that's also self report.
Maybe the maybe the numbers artificially low, who knows, um.
But to get a little more into the psychology of

(16:09):
why we would hang on to something like that for
years and years and years, it's this combination of essentialism
and an endowment effect, which is the idea that objects
are more than just their physical selves. You know, that
rabbit that you have is not just a stuffed rabbit
filled with cotton. It is a gift from your mother.
Maybe something I'm not I'm not trying to put it like,

(16:31):
I'm not trying to endow your rabbit with me. Are
you trying to say that I talked to it at
night because I don't. But as an example your you know,
if you were practicing essentialism, your rabbit would not just
be a rabbit, but maybe a symbol of your mother
who you don't get to see all the time. And
then with endowment, we place more value in things when
we feel ownership over them. So even though that rabbit

(16:54):
might not have cost so much, if you were to
lose it, you would probably be sad about the value
of bit because it's linked to your mom. I know again,
I'm only using your rabbit as an example. I would
have totally been sad to lose with Koala. She was
she was totally a mother figure. Yeah, it would have
been irreplaceable. Yeah, for children with those beloved stuffed animals.

(17:15):
It doesn't matter whether you have the exact same Koala
that was sitting next to it on the store shelf.
It's not the one that you know, that's right. Yeah.
And even even when you know you mentioned that boys
cast off those those lovees, those those stuffed animals earlier
than girls. Do they still know where they are? Yeh.
A nineteen eighties six study from the Journal of the

(17:37):
American Academy of Child Psychiatry found they talked to middle
schoolers and they found that while twenty one percent of
girls and twelve percent of boys still use their security
object at the age of thirteen or fourteen, seventy three
percent of the girls and forty percent of the boys
still knew where the object was. They're still like, yeah,
it's still under my bed. Yeah. And even in adulthood.

(17:58):
There was a study which found that people experienced stress
just cutting up pictures of beloved objects, which I can imagine.
I mean, they measured their heart rate and uh there
the amount of palm sweat and found that both increased
as they were cutting stuff up, which I can imagine
if I were to cut up a picture of Duckie.
Even now, I feel very weird about it, kind of

(18:22):
kind of blasphemous in a way. Um. But some researchers
have looked into the issue of childhood and neglect, playing
into attachment to stuffed animals, wondering whether or not kids
use stuffed animals as tools to get through traumatic events,
especially um parental neglect, because they are those transitional objects.

(18:45):
Psychologists would say between uh being very close with um,
a mother in particular, but as you're being weaned from
the breast. Uh. And there was a paper that we
found published in March two thousand and twelve old in
the Journal and throw Zoos called childhood neglect attachment to
companion animals and stuffed animals as attachment objects in women

(19:08):
and men, and their hypothesis was that childhood neglect would
be positively related to attachment to stuffed animals, and that
was not supported. Like basically saying, okay, if you were
very attached to a stuffed animal does not mean that
we're likely neglected as a child. I was definitely not neglected,
and I was super attached to a lot of stuffed animals. Well,

(19:31):
that also supports, though the study finding that women are
a little bit more attached to both companion animals, the
pets and stuffed animals compared to men. But I wonder, though,
how much of that really is the socialization factor if
we were just all allowed to carry our our Linus blankets.

(19:52):
Well that's interesting too that you bring up Linus because
three of the primary examples I can think of in
literature slash pop culture of attachment blankets would be a
Milns Why the Pooh owned by Christopher Robin, and then
in Brideshead revisited. You have a loy Sis, the Teddy
breand that's taken along to college, and then you have

(20:14):
a Linus. Yeah, the boy. It's all these boys with
their attachment objects. Oh, that's true, the side observation. Okay, well,
so what do you do when you've lost your kids
stuffed animals? Freak out or blank? Yeah, you freak out
because you're like, oh my god, my kid is never
going to recover, he's never gonna stop crying. I need

(20:36):
to find that thing. But it turns out that anxiety
is really more the parents, uh then the kids overreacting,
and that parents might actually inadvertently encourage attachment to a
particular object when they freak out. Stephanie Pratola, psychologist in June,
told USA Today that kids can pick up on parents

(20:58):
frantic reactions to a lost item and not so surprisingly.
The Internet has also stepped in with resources for finding
lost lovees. There are sites such as eBay that has
uh do they have special uh segments set up for
long special area like it's called toy box or something.
There's also Lost My Love e LLC and Plush Memories. Yeah.

(21:23):
They kind of hook you up with people who will
send you a toy. If you get on there and
you're like, my kid lost her purple dinosaur, some other
mom in Ohio can be like, oh, I have a
purple dinosaur that my kid doesn't care about, and we'll
mail you the purple dinosaur and all will be well
with the world. Um. But one thing, speaking though, of gender,
Even though the studies that we found indicate, like we

(21:45):
said that girls tend to form stronger attachments or and
longer attachments to these transitional objects, but I want to
know in terms of naming, whether what role gender played
in that, whether or not for instant kids were more
likely to name Stay a lion with a masculine name,

(22:05):
whereas we might name a pony with a more feminine name.
I wasn't able to find anything about that. Just kind
of wondering how since kids are forming these strong attachments
around the same time, but they're really forming gender identities,
whether or not that's reflected onto their stuffed animal. If
it's like our stuffed animals ourselves, you know, yeah, I

(22:28):
mean maybe it makes sense. Doesn't say anything about or
or I mean just like for for me, you know,
I named my duck Duckie, but she was a girl,
but then again, she wore a dress. Now that I recall,
I mean my koala was a girl. And I don't
think koalas are very gendered, are they? Or are they?
They're cuddly, they're cuddling, cuddly, So it was a girl.

(22:50):
I don't know. But my glow worm, I actually I
actually did get in trouble in preschool or kindergarten. I
had a glow worm, which, if you recall from the eighties,
they have those squishy bodies, but that really really hard
face and and Carol was tormenting classmates by hitting some
of them with the gloworm. Gloworom have a name? Shoot,

(23:13):
probably I can't remember any of these names. It's kind
of tormenting me. Well, the close things out on this
episode about stuffed animal, how about ending with some totally
ridiculous advice or stuffed animal symbolism. Yeah, you're the website.

(23:35):
Your tango is trying to give some perspective to men
on what it means if a woman that you are
seeing has a stuffed animal in her house, and if
she does, what type is it? Because oh, that has
so many hidden meanings. According to this the woman that
you really want to date. Um, she should probably either

(23:55):
have no stuffed animals. A classic teddy bear or or
maybe a raggedy old one does seem like the best.
They say that a woman with no stuffed animals she's practical,
she's no frill. She'll probably offer to go Dutch and
buy books from a second hand store, and she probably
enjoys a homemade dinner just as much as a four
star restaurant. But if she has a cheap collection from

(24:18):
the drug store, she's cheap with questionable taste and has
cheap x is. Yeah, and watch out for the women
whose beds are covered in stuffed animals. They probably don't
get a lot of action, gentlemen. She's probably a neat freak,
or maybe she has a lot of free dam on
her hands. Oh, what bizarre things we assume about people. Yeah,

(24:42):
I would say check yourself if you are cross checking
the internets for information about what someone stuffed animal collection
means about them. Yeah, I mean, there are probably other
ways to tell if someone is mentally stable or not. Yeah,
by just asking them a series of questions on the
clipboard that you carry around on your dates. Yes, exactly. Um, well,

(25:05):
we want to hear though about people's stuffed animals, what
they meant to them, and also for adults out there,
do you still keep stuffed animals? And if you do,
why haven't you gotten rid of them? What do they
mean to you? Yeah? I think right now all of
my stuffed animals are at my parents house. But my
mom has been very vigilant about holding onto them, and

(25:28):
I don't think I could ever really throw them away.
I would feel weird throwing them away just because of
the meaning attached, or because they have little personalities. I
guess the meaning attached, it would be it would be weird,
it would be I think it would be weirder for
I would feel like I was breaking my mom's heart. See,
my mom is like get rid of everything. Every time
I see her, she's like, you know, you still have

(25:49):
some stuff in your closet at our house, right, except
she's also giving you stuffed rabbits. She's also giving me
stuffed rabbits. I don't know. I'm getting mixed signals. Sally, Sally, Well,
I'll write to us about yours or your children stuffed animals.
Please share share any and all memories that has evoked
mom stuff at discovery dot com is where you can

(26:10):
send your letters. You can also send us a message
on Facebook or a quick shout out on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast. And now back to our letters. Yeah,
here's one from Jennifer about our crying at work episode.
She says, I don't see the issue unless it's someone
man or woman who cries constantly, mainly because that brings
into question the validity of their tears. Manipulative crying is

(26:34):
never appreciated. But I don't see any problem with crying
in general. Holding it in or acting like we're too
tough to cry I can be very harmful emotionally in
the long run. Your comments and suggestions made it seem
like there's still a general stigma against crying at work
or in public in general, which I'm not sure there is.
Perhaps that was the case for earlier generations, like you said,
but I really think this current generation actually appreciates honesty

(26:55):
of emotion. I don't see that it freaks people out,
as you put it, but rather help people real us
that everyone is human and then we all have bad days.
I don't know. I have to say that crying at
work freaks me out, even when it's me, it freaked
me out but thanks Jennifer. Well, I've got an email
here from Dave and he writes, I'm a man, and
up until recently, I've spent a lot of time crying

(27:17):
in the office, sometimes at my desk, but when I
got really bad, two or three times a day in
the bathroom. And there's something that you didn't mention, and
that is that there may be something wrong with your brain.
I cried so often because I just couldn't cope with
my responsibilities at work or at home. Six weeks ago
I was diagnosed with a d h D and now
take medication for it daily. My situation at work improved

(27:39):
very quickly, and I haven't had to run in the
bathroom and cry since I started taking the meds. Other
people may be clinically depressed, has severe anxiety or other
health problems. A brain disorder or a chemical imbalance often
isn't something you can think or positive talk your way
out of. I'm not saying that medication should ever be
the first choice, and that you should resort to medication
if you're feeling a little sad, If you find yourself

(28:00):
crying uncontrollably and it's happening every day, you might want
to talk to your doctor. So again. You can send
your letters to mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. You
can find us on Facebook, where we're always up to
lots of fun, and Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast. You
can also follow us on Tumblr, It's stuff Mom Never
Told You dot tumbler dot com, and if you'd like

(28:22):
to visit our website during the week, it's how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
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