What are the aetiology, drives and experiences of the non-sexual adult baby?

Abstract

Adult Babies (ABs) are predominantly categorised as paraphiliacs, kink practitioners or fetishists. However, whilst this may be true for some within the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community, this stance does not consider a subgroup of the community whose practice is devoid of sexual or adult gratifications. A Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) methodology was employed to capture the lived experience, historic and current, of a sample of the UK ABDL community by answering the question “what are the aetiology, drives and experiences of the non-sexual adult baby?” 10 participants were interviewed and the data analysed by single coder analysis. The key themes identified within the data were: a non-sexual process; a history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs); early onset; the juvenile process is not limited to an infantile process; the juvenile configuration is not bound to gender; the process is experienced as intractable (until apposite therapeutic intervention); the juvenile process is inherently about affect management. From these findings a theoretical framework, Trauma Induced Age Regressive Process (TIARP), was developed. It is a finding of this study that, for this specific subgroup of the UK ABDL community, the aetiology of said behaviours lies in developmental trauma, itself a distinguishing feature demarcating this specific subgroup from the broader ABDL community. The data from this sample confirmed the presence of a discrete subgroup of the UK ABDL community whose experiences and drives are unconnected to paraphilic infantilism or fetishistic and kink practices. Additionally, as this thesis will evidence, this subgroup is vulnerable in the wider social milieu, their practice being erroneously conflated with paedophilic intent and being subject to sexual predation. The TIARP framework is introduced and discussed, as too are the implications and limitations of this research.