Nepiophilia

Nepiophilia is an attraction to newborns, infants and toddlers under five years of age, romantic, sexual or both. Sometimes it is defined only as an attraction to toddlers, with infantophilia being a separate term for an attraction towards even younger ages. Sometimes these terms are seen as synonymous.

History of the term
The word "infantophilia" in its modern interpretation was first mentioned according to most researchers in Infantophilia — a new subcategory of pedophilia?: a preliminary study by David Greenberg, described there as "sexual orientation for children under five years of age". This was later elaborated upon in "Profile of paedophilia: definition, offender characteristics, recidivism, treatment outcomes and forensic issues". Previously it was interpreted along with the term nepiophilia by Jay R. Feierman as: "If the eligible partner is an infant, "infantophilia"* is the diagnostic term. If it is essential that the infant be wearing diapers, however, the Greek-derived term for the diapered infant, "nepiophilia"*,applies". However, this interpretation was later rejected because of the vagueness of the origin of such a peculiar and unconfirmed definition. Greenberg, on the other hand, is an exceptionally reliable source, as he studied actual MAPs rather than relying on theoretical assumptions.

Etymology
The term consists of the Greek "νήπιος" (népios) meaning "infant" or "child", which derives from "ne" and "epos" meaning "not speaking". This is worth clarifying, as it is no less common for the variation of the origin of the term from an another Greek root "νέπους" or "νέποδες" meaning "children", or Latin "nepos", "nepotis" meaning "nephew" or "grandson", which does not explain the letter i in "nepio". And φιλία (philía) in turn means "love".

Symbols
The nepiophile flag (pictured above) was designed by Pappy in March 2022. They also made a nepio caterpillar in 2020, taking inspiration from the childlove butterfly.

Misconceptions
Empirical studies show that in the vast majority of cases nepiophilia does not overlap with pedophilia and that among pedophiles the attraction to children of the nepiophile age group occurs in less than 10% of cases, so the identification of nepiophilia and pedophilia or calling the former a sub-type of the latter is fundamentally wrong. In fact, nepiophilia is much less common than hebephilia and ephebophilia, making it the least common of the minor attractions. Due to that non-prevalence there is much less publicly available information on it than on any other chronophilia. Although according to Howells 1981 ; Bernard 1982 ; McConaghy 1993 ; Lautmann 1994, male-oriented pedophilia more prevalently blends in with ephebophilia, while female-oriented pedophilia more prevalently blends in with nepiophilia.