Linus to the contrary, the American child's favorite security blanket is the teddy bear.
That's the contention of Dr. Paul Horton, a Meriden, Conn., psychiatrist who studied what he calls "extra-parental solacers" or "transitional objects," and what the rest of us refer to as "loveys" or "blankies."One of four babies will choose a teddy bear as a transitional object, Horton told Parents magazine.
In a study of 890 children between ages 5 and 13, Horton and his colleagues found that 40 percent developed a close attachment to a stuffed animal - twice as many as those who got their security from a blanket. And of those who chose stuffed animals, about six in 10 chose teddy bears.
Charles Schulz, creator of the cartoon strip "Peanuts," told Parents that he never had a security blanket, but got the idea for Linus' famed blanket from his children.
In a telephone interview, Horton was asked why bears had their claws into the nation's youth.
"It's been called a cultural fad, but that doesn't explain it," he said. "Over the past 100 years children have been offered a lot of solaces - stuffed lions, giraffes and so forth - but for some reason children prefer the teddy bear.
"Part of it may be that the bear is enough like a human for the child to relate to but different enough to distinguish it. It's ideally situated in psychological space."
A transitional object is part of the child's transition from total dependence on its mother to relative independence, and it is defined as the first thing a child turns to consistently for solace and comfort besides its parents or itself.
The chosen bear or blanket is usually soft and cuddly, so much so that it soon becomes dirty and ragged, often with a whiff of milk or some foul-smelling substance. "Mothers tend to spend a lot of time cleaning or repairing transitional objects," Horton noted.
But as far as kids are concerned, the lovey's grunginess adds to its appeal. "It's the child's own to do with as it wishes: take it, leave it, keep it, throw it away," Horton said.
Although "lovey" is probably the most common lay term for the transitional object, children themselves have come up with a wide range of alternatives. Jason Azocar, 5, of Salem, N.H., calls his blanket his "gigi" (GEE-gee), while Peter Miller, 5, of Stratham, N.H., prefers "gaga" (GAH-gah). Peter's older sister Emily uses "baba" (BAH-bah.)