Control, Caring and Domination

It’s hard to find information on being a dad to an adult baby. There are lots of people active on forums including dads and moms, but very few ‘go to’ places for the parent of an adult baby.

One article that seems to pop up in search (and when I find the link, I’ll add it to this post!) was focused on the use of diapers in a BDSM setting: in other words, it provided advice for a master in diapering his or her slave. Not exactly the advice I was looking for!

But this is one of the challenges of thinking about and experiencing being a dad to an adult baby: the language can tend towards that of dominance and submission or masters and slaves – terms which I think are devoid of nuance and tenderness.

I’m not interested in dominance. I’m interested in caring. This sense of caring may include the fact that an adult baby assumes a submissive role, but this doesn’t strike me as implying that the submission is to someone is who is dominant with its implications of domineering or controlling.

Now, I don’t deny that there is a very wide range of experiences in the dad/son (or parent/child) relationship, among them many people interested in the forms of dominance and submission that can be closely associated with BDSM settings (just with different furniture LOL) – but it feels as if there’s a lack of language for the particular type of dynamic at play in which the son gives up control in order to be cared for by someone who may be in a position of greater dominance but who is not necessarily controlling or domineering.

I prefer to think of the ‘dad’ role as being about nurturing care-taking: the son may have lost control, in particular because of their diapers, but this doesn’t mean that they have been dominated.