Doll play.

Abstract

Doll play has long been a part of children's lives and cultures. From early Victorian era wives collecting and creating family lives in miniature as a way to showcase wealth to rural children in the 1800s covering corncobs in scraps of fabric (e.g., Laura Ingalls Wilder's first doll in 1871; Wilder, 2016) to children in the 2000s connecting mechanical dolls to computers to update their capabilities, dolls are known in many formats and serve multiple functions.Dolls come in many types, including baby dolls, plush dolls (both human and animal), worry dolls, and anatomically correct and specific dolls. They have been used in home, school, and therapeutic settings to encourage children's sense of self, teach nurturance, gain insight into children's thoughts and emotions, assess aggression, support sexual abuse disclosures, reduce anxiety related to medical procedures, and learn about familial relationships. Considerable research supports the use of dolls to reduce anxiety and cognitive disturbances for people dealing with dementia, but for the purposes of this chapter, only doll play with children is discussed.