Very well said Foxkits.
The following is purely opinion: Whenever we are that young, there's no difference or recognition of a difference between sexual stimulation and non-sexual stimulation. In the beginning we know absolutely nothing. Shortly afterwords the only thing we know is stimulation. At that state we know that some things feel good and other things don't feel good. And our brains develop around that. While our minds continue to develop we realize that some things feel really good and maybe some things feel really bad. Because we know nothing besides these basic rudimentary feelings, whenever our brains develop to the point of association, those things that were good are great and those things that were bad are horrible. This is why I believe that people are so different because brains develop in different ways, and associate things together at different rates. We being in the diaper loving community began associating joys and pleasure at a very early age, so we all (i believe at least) have a connection to ABhood, at least in some form. Sure not all of us want to dress up as a baby but we all love diapers. Some of us may enjoy messing while others do not, and some may enjoy drinking out of a bottle while others could completely care less; but the underlying connection between all of us is that we love diapers. I believe this is do to the fact that a diaper is the most specifically related thing to babyhood. Sure we know now that it can also be related to being old, but when we were young when had no ideas of that. I think my opinion has merit here too, since when we are first being potty trained (something people have their earliest memories of sometime), our parents are explaining to us, forcing upon us, the ideology that potty is for grown up and diaper is for baby. So essentially one of the very first associations we can remember making is that exact lesson. If I where a diaper I am a baby, but if I am not wearing a diaper I am a child/adult. A diaper is really the first and biggest association we ever made about being a baby. And as previously mentioned being a baby is appealing to us sexually/comfortingly due to the fact that at very early ages (maybe earlier than most people) our minds developed to associate good and bad.
Something I remember from my diaper/pull ups/training pant days was my changing fixations. There were several things in my development that made me feel overwhelmingly calm for no reason. One common association was sucking of the thumb. Everyone's had this fixation because when we were in the process of developing we associated sucking with good or pleasure. How? Milk! We sucked our bottles or mother's breast and this gave us food, the sweet taste of milk. We immediately associated sucking on something with good. That is why the thumb was a great alternative later on. I also remember specifically whenever I sucked on my thumb, I had even more extreme comfort/pleasure from rubbing the tag on the back of my shirt between my thumb and fingers. There was something with the texture and feeling of rubbing the tag while sucking my thumb that was like cloud 9, maybe the velvety vibration it made. At that time we had no way to distinguish something as sexual gratification, but now that we are older we do. I've read some articles on the affect of forcing a child into different stages of development or rushing individual stages that seem to cause a sexual fixation on later in life. This makes a lot of sense to me because I don't have any fixation/yearning whatsoever with sucking my thumb anymore. I think this is because when we first move into a new stage of development all we know is that initial association with good or bad. Over time and growing into the stage we develop/learn enough to realize that the initial association we made is far to simple. We learn for example, that sucking is not actually the root cause of good. We learn there are more things than sucking that we can associate with good. And as we learn more things, naturally our need to suck our thumbs goes away because we don't need it to feel good anymore. It's the same concept of flooding a market by printing money. Before your dollar meant a lot because there weren't a lot in the world. Now that there are many in existence, your dollar has intrinsically less value. I believe the exact same concept can be applied with early development. Once we learn there are more things in the world that cause us pleasure we can value the basic/archaic methods of finding happiness null, like sucking a thumb. When, however, we are rushed/coerced/forced through a developmental stage we are never given the chance of letting it go through natural selection. Instead it is forced into the back of our minds as being a root cause for pleasure. We don't have the ability to naturally learn there are other sources of pleasure, so our brains lock it away. And when we grow up it will always in our minds be associated with happiness. This is probably another reason why we love diapers. Perhaps we were rushed through the diaper/potty process and locked it away. Other fetishes in the world such as BDSM, love of plastic, etc. have a lot to do as well with early developmental association.
I apologize for repeating some of the points made above, but I find this topic fascinating. Also I think have a different perspective on this stuff since I have another fetish that is completely unique to babyism (that I'm very confidant no one on this site has ever heard of).
I look upon ABDL as a blessing because we ended up with a fetish that is completely harmless and relatively cheap, which is unfortunately not the case for all people.
Cheers!:smile: