Like many men, I like to an end a long day at work by coming home, kicking off my shoes, and enjoying a nice tall cocktail. Granted, I work from home, so this entire exercise only necessitates the pouring of the alcohol, but that’s beside the point: How I unwind after work is, I’ve come to learn, rather typical of many men. Stanley Thornton, 29, is not so typical. When he comes home from work, he puts on a diaper, puts in a binky, plays with his Legos and generally acts like a 2-year-old until it’s time to go to bed—when he adjourns to his custom-made adult-size crib.
Stanley, you see, is as an adult baby who pursues a lifestyle called infantilism, which was recently profiled on Taboos on the National Geographic Channel. His desire to act and be treated as a baby began when he was 14, when most adolescent boys are preoccupied with self-abuse. According to the video above, Stanley’s lifestyle is not a sexual fetish.
“You’re doing it to relax. You come home from work and you change into baby mode and you put away all your adult stuff.”
He’s even hired a woman to act as a nurse of sorts, to wake him up in his crib, speak to him in baby talk, and coddle him like a mother would an infant.
Stanley says some people are fine with how he lives his life, while others think he’s insane. To avoid conflicts, he doesn’t act like a baby in public, which is probably a blessing to everyone.
At base, Stanley’s lifestyle seems like a harmless way to indulge in fantasy; a way to comfort himself, to feel safe.
Some people unwind with a stiff drink. Stanley unwinds with a stiff binky. To each his own, I reckon. Still, he must be spending a fortune on diapers.