This includes controversial issues such as sexual paraphilia, etc. These are my thoughts on an often overlooked discipline of sexuality, and are in no way backed by research, studies, or any evidence that is more qualitative than anecdotal. I encourage readers to give their own opinions, and to debate me if they disagree, but please do not engage in flaming or attempt to derail the discussion with biased or hateful remarks.

Every fetish has two faces: tame and adult. Now, people can be more into one of those faces than the other, but there is always an overlap, never all one or the other. For diapers, this is the 'adult baby' and 'diaper lover' respectively, though the names are deceiving. When indulging the tame side of a diaper fetish, the point is to induce feelings of safety and innocence, because that's what the big baby is after. Most children who grow up with a diaper fetish had hard home lives, either because they felt unloved, neglected, unsafe, or lonely. It's usually a combination of those, or all of them, though. For the fetishist, diapers are a gateway back to a time where you could be safe, happy, and carefree, which is why the fetish becomes most prevalent during high-stress situations. It's a temporary escape. With the tame face of the fetish, the partner is usually -not- a sexual partner. They're a personification of how the child had wished their caregiver(s) had been, hence the expectation of the caregiver to be infinitely loving and giving, while never expecting anything in return. The sexual face of diaper/regression fetish draws its power from a different source entirely. If the tame face of the fetish is willingly surrendering your responsibility to take on the carefree life of a child, the adult side is having that self-reliance and responsibility taken from you, often by force. The submissive partner is forced into the lowly role of a child, whereas the dominant takes up the role of an all-powerful parent. Adult face diaper fetish is often mistaken for pedophilia, which is totally unrelated, which I will now explain. But first, some background on adult fetishes in general:

Every sexual interaction has two possible roles: the active and passive partner, more frequently referred to as the dominant and the submissive partner. This is common through all fetishes everywhere, it is simply the choice of HOW that dominance and submission takes shape. For bondage fetishists, having your movement restricted is an act of submission. With voreophilia, it's allowing yourself to be consumed by the dominant. Foot fetishists get off on forcing the submissive to worship what is regarded as a 'lowly' or 'dirty' part of the body, etc. With pedophiles, the rush comes from forcing sexual acts on an inherently weaker child, or having a weaker, smaller child perform sexual acts on you. This is different from diaper fetish, where the appeal is in the reduction of an adult to the ROLE and STATUS of a child, it DOES NOT include a sexual attraction to children themselves. The appeal is in the reduction from strong to weak.